For a sport with such small balls, golf is an unusually large target.
People who don’t watch it or understand the nuances of the game are quick to dismiss it as boring.
My mother never understood why I watched golf on TV as a young child. But if she sat with me for even 30 minutes, she would soon be ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ over some of the precision shots the pros could pull off.
And in television golf tournaments, you see a lot of golf. The cameras jump from tee to fairway to green, so you get to see sometimes 50+ different golfers swing the club or putt every 30 seconds or less.
So, contrary to what you might think, there is a lot of action in golf.
In contrast, televised baseball and football games — America’s sports — mostly involve standing around. A Wall Street Journal study calculated that a baseball fan will see 17 minutes and 58 seconds of action over the course of a three-hour game. And the football audience? A paltry 11 minutes per game.
So for pure entertainment value, swing for swing, I’d put the US Open Golf Championship up against a baseball game any day. I’ve watched both, and I feel pretty good about my chances.
Armchair quarterback
One of the first things I saw on television this morning was the commercial featuring “Mr. Hyperbole” Terry Bradshaw promoting the vaccine for shingles:
Since I have had the misfortune to have shingles twice at an unusually young age, I feel like I need to speak up — to confirm that what he’s saying is true (because his style of delivery can sometimes appear false).
Shingles is a bitch, pure and simple.
You have a horrible, itchy rash on your skin, just as Terry described. But what makes it 10 times worse is that the pain runs far deeper. It’s like your internal organs are on fire, and your muscles ache — all at the same time. And you have the rash to deal with, too.
Quite simply, you are miserable.
I had my first case of shingles in my 20’s on my back, which is a fairly classic presentation. It made breathing almost impossible. In my early 40’s, it reappeared on my shin, which is so unusual, it took ER doctors two days and a ridiculous amount of testing to diagnose. I had phantom leg pain from that case of shingles for almost two years.
I wouldn’t wish shingles on my worse enemy, so if your doctor recommends the vaccine, give it serious consideration.
Terry and I aren’t lying.
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Posted in Advertising, Celebrities, Commentary, Health, Humor, Sports, Television
Tagged advertising, armchair quarterback, breathing, celebrities, classic presentation, commentary, commercial, ER doctor, football, Health, Humor, hyperbole, internal organs, medical diagnosis, medical testing, muscle ache, muscles, pain, phantom pain, quarterback, rash, shin, shingles, shingles vaccine, skin rash, Sports, Television, Terry Bradshaw