Ryder Cup 2010: look into tv's depth of 3D vision but Sky coverage shows lack of insight


And yet, here I was at Sky Sports’ headquarters in south-west London, literally peering into the future. There comes a point in everybody’s life when they give up trying to understand science, and simply sit back and bask in the warm glow of its progress. This was that point.

“Have you ever seen anything in 3D before?” the man from Sky asked.

“Reality,” I wanted to answer, frantically scouring my declarative memory for details. We remember dates, we remember people, colours, sounds, smells - but so rarely dimensions. In fact, I had seen something: Captain EO was a 3D film made by Disney in the mid-1980s, starring a still-black Michael Jackson, and viewed by me at Disneyland in California in around 1996. As I recall, it featured a lot of aliens, machinery and goo, all of which ultimately proved vulnerable to the power of music and moonwalking.

At the time, 3D was still something of a gimmick - perfectly adequate for gripping a pre-teen’s attention for 15 minutes, but nothing more. But a decade and a half later, here was Colin Montgomerie, the furrows in his brow noticeably further away from me than the ridges, his wobbling chins in perfect visual hierarchy. I was strangely rapt.

Following a successful trial in pubs, Friday saw the launch of Sky’s domestic 3D service, and I was assured that the Ryder Cup was the perfect outlet to demonstrate its faculties. The man from Sky told me I would be able to make out the contours of the green and pick out the ball while it was in flight (I bet he tells all the girls that). Due to the weather, I had to take his word for it.

You had to feel for Sky Sports on Friday. They took 20 3D cameras to Celtic Manor, and for most of the day all they were able to capture was moisture.

The canopy that was erected to keep all the equipment dry almost blew away, and worst of all, they were forced to run a procession of tedious B-roll films that were never intended to see the light of a screen. We got up close and personal with the oak panelling in the changing rooms and found out how many portions of fish and chips the organisers were expecting to serve up over the weekend (around 20,000; most of the fish had actually been caught on the 18th green).

After seven hours, the rain mercifully abated and sunlight leaked into south Wales. Never has a nation been more gratified by the sight of Jeff Overton.

What was required from Sky was some sense of urgency and occasion, but its golf team has always had a problem getting out of second gear, and Sky’s coverage felt a little flat during this weekend of high drama. Like a lay-up in front of the water at the 18th, it was straight, safe and a little bit timid.

By comparison, the BBC’s highlights were a three-wood smacked straight at the green. Peter Alliss’s description of the last hole - “the long 18th, full of danger...very important to find the fairway...very, very dangerous hole” - made it sound like the Northwest Passage, and when first Stewart Cink and then Rory McIlroy plonked their second shots into the lake, his portent was borne out. “That was a weary Willie of a shot,” Alliss remarked of McIlroy’s effort. It was hard to imagine a similar feat of verbal dexterity emerging from the Sky box.

But back to the 3D for a second. It occurred to me, as I squinted through plastic spectacles, that Sky’s view of the future almost made the tameness of its coverage obsolete. Who’s going to bother listening to Bruce Critchley when the world is shifting before your eyes? It’s interesting that the BBC has so far shown little enthusiasm for the format, and it showed in the way it prioritised depth of insight over depth of vision.

The third dimension is here, but whether you find it in the commentary box or through a pair of dark glasses depends very much on which channel you happen to be watching.
Ryder Cup tv schedule
telegraph.co.uk


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