Watchdog

CBS will air a documentary at 2 p.m. Saturday about the history of the aerial camera shot and its effect on golf coverage.

It runs for . . . an hour.

And is sponsored by . . . MetLife.

Here's a graph from the release:

Whether it’s the rugged beauty of California’s Pebble Beach and Torrey Pines, or the low-lying resorts at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina and Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, The Best Shot in Golf presented by MetLife, takes the viewer behind the scenes to show how dramatic shots are captured each week, as well as the exceptional demands on those involved -- allowing sports fans an inside look at the moving pieces that make up the live golf coverage.

Golf people are weird.

Speaking of Trevor Immelman (see post below), he and David Wright both did a nice job on David Letterman's show Monday night.

But the most interesting thing about it was seeing Wright take b.p. on 53rd Street while Immelman played centerfield . . . wearing a lefty glove.

Was it the only one available, or does Trevor swing right, throw left? That is an unusual combo. Rickey Henderson did that.

(UPDATE: WatchDog has learned Immelman is, in fact, a lefty, and even signs autographs that way. Weird.)

A source close to Immelman told WatchDog last night that the Masters champ never had been to New York before his media whirlwind Monday.

It continues today with appearances with Regis and Kelly and a visit to the top of the Empire State Building for a photo op.

I was invited to an event next week that involves schmoozing with Kelly, who produced a film about wrestling. But I'm playing softball that night if my back feels better. Sigh.

Trevor Immelman will present the Top 10 list on "Late Show with David Letterman" tonight, an episode on which David Wright of Our Mets is scheduled to appear as a guest.

(Isn't Wright tired of talking from being the unofficial locker room spokesman for the squad?)

Immelman's Masters victory drew 8.9 percent of homes in major markets for Sunday's final round, down a tad from last year's 9.1.

That's still a lot of people watching golf.

In fairness, it's certainly not just TV people who get overly sappy about The Masters (see post below).

Print reporters are guilty, too. In fact, there is no group of sportswriters more reverential when it comes to the sport it covers than golf writers.

And there is no group of sportswriters more likely to regularly play the sport it covers than golf writers.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily. Because people who read stories about golf also are much more likely to play the game than is true of fans of most other sports.

I have many good friends who are golf writers. So I'll leave them alone now.

And leave you alone. Enjoy Fairfield Prep vs. Greenwich lacrosse on MSG Plus at 6 p.m.

And enjoy the free food at the Knicks game.

Still waiting on CBS's ratings report from the "sacred sod" of some rich guys' golf club in Georgia Sunday.

ESPN already has weighed in, though, alerting the media that Friday's second round of The Masters was the "most-viewed cable golf telecast ever."

It averaged 3,014,394 households and 3.1 percent of homes that have ESPN. Pretty good.

“We're pleased to play a role in helping the Masters address its goal of reaching a younger audience and growing the game of golf," ESPN president George Bodenheimer said in a news release.

What did I think of CBS's coverage over the weekend? It is what it is. The sappy romanticizing of The Masters has become a parody of itself, but taking that too seriously is as annoying as the way ESPN and CBS take the tournament too seriously.

People have been making fun of this for decades now, and it's not going to change, so let's just move on to important stuff, like the blessed blue lines and godly goal creases of the NHL playoffs.

I was just watching Gary Player on "Amen Corner Live."

Still cool in its third year on line.

Aaaaand . . . we're off!

Four minutes into Masters week, Mike Tirico is gushing about the beauty of the Par 3 course and has used the word "patrons" twice to describe the fans/crowd/mob/gallery.

It's going to be a long, long week, golf non-believers.

Anyway, it appears Kelly Tilghman now has been fully rehabilitated since I inadvertently almost ended her career in January.

The Golf Channel sent word earlier that she is carrying Arnold Palmer's bag for the Par 3 Contest. (Not tournament or challenge or showdown or event. It's "contest," got it?)

Anyway, good for her.

Here is my Tuesday newspaper column, in which I . . . unfairly make fun of ESPN in wondering about its Masters credentials, give props to Isles analyst Billy Jaffe for his Emmy upset of Ron Darling, encourage Mike Milbury and Don Cherry to diss Jaromir Jagr and (sort of) congratulate Dickie V. for being elected to the Hall of Fame.

Here's a shocking piece of news:

Tiger Woods' dramatic victory helped the ratings Sunday for the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

The event's overnight rating in major markets was 4.2, up 68 percent from last year's 2.5, and the best in six years.

Said NBC's Johnny Miller: “The guy’s not even human.”

Miller added this on NBCSports.com: "I was crying, literally."

Usually the only crying in golf comes from tournament organizers when they hear Tiger is not going to participate.

The top four markets in the ratings for the final round were Orlando (9.8), Fort Myers (9.6), Buffalo (7.5) and Tampa (7.4).

Hmm. One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong.

Here is the Golf Channel's exclusive interview with perennially troubled John Daly.

Click below for the transcript of the Wednesday chat.

Is the novelty of this guy's saga going to expire soon?

Nick Faldo, as chatty as ever, has some issues with Nike . . . and vice versa.

Maybe I should start watching more golf on TV.

Tiger Woods' blowout match play victory surely supressed NBC's ratings Sunday, but the event still did 67 percent better than last year's Tiger-less final . . . and it comfortably beat Shaq and the Suns against the Pistons head-to-head from 2:30 to 5 p.m. - 4.0 percent of households to 2.4.

By the way, the Sun is scheduled to explode in five billion years or so and incinerate us.

So it's best not to get too stressed out about stuff in life.

But I digress.

A loyal reader just wondered why I haven't posted anything yet about Golfweek firing its editor.

I was researching a newspaper article about that and doing some Giants stuff for Sunday.

Here is the link to the AP story. Sorry for the delay, but in the future check Newsday.com's main sports page for breaking news as well as the blog.

Thanks for reading.

This blogging thing has my priorites so confused it's a wonder I still am employed.

On Thursday I did a post on the controversial Golfweek magazine cover about Kelly Tilghman. Done. Late in the day editors reading the blog pointed out that I perhaps should write an article for the newspaper on the topic. They were right, of course.

In October I broke the story on the blog in early afternoon that Don Imus was near a deal with Citadel to return to the air. At about 7 p.m. it struck me: I probably should write something for the newspaper about this also. Hello?!

Here is today's story about the Golfweek cover. And here is a Shaun Powell column on that subject.

If the Giants lose Sunday I'll take a couple of days off next week.

Just when you thought the Kelly Tilghman Affair was dying down, Golfweek magazine bizarrely fanned the flames with a shocking selection of cover art this week.

Here is a story in USA Today about it.

Hard to believe that when I "broke" this story, I did so in the final paragraph of an 800-word newspaper column last Tuesday.

Sigh.

For those of you who don't see the blog on weekends . . .

I wanted to direct you to a debate about the recent Kelly Tilghman Affair in which WatchDog commenters participated over the weekend.

Unlike many Internet discussions on the topic, this one mostly was conducted at a respectful, thoughtful level.

It even featured the Hofstra professor whose e-mail initially alerted both Newsday and the Golf Channel to Ms. Tilghman's unfortunate attempt at humor.

This is more like what Prof. William Mangino hoped would occur when he helped make the matter public: a constructive, frank dialogue rather than mindless name-calling from both sides.

I don't think I've ever had a "scoop" as strange as the one last week about Kelly Tilghman's notorious "lynch" comment on the Golf Channel.

It came in the form of a tiny item in a Tuesday newspaper column, and I didn't know until that evening that it hadn't been reported elsewhere before.

The eventual result was a two-week suspension for Tilghman, many tens of thousands of Internet hits for Newsday.com, e-mails from as far away as Taiwan and another opportunity to debate the state of race relations in assorted media outlets across America.

Friday I finally talked to the man who started it all, William Mangino, an assistant professor of sociology at Hofstra, who heard the comment live Friday night and alerted Newsday and the PGA Tour.

I wrote an article about him in the Saturday newspaper. He likes Tilghman's work, does not think she should be fired, appreciates the Golf Channel's willingness to put a woman in that job and believes Don Imus' remarks of last April (given his history of such humor) were "much more egregious" than the Tilghman incident.

Still, he was horrified by Tilghman's poor attempt at humor and equally so by the hurtful level of discourse from both sides in Internet discussions on the topic.

Click below to read Mangino's original e-mail to Newsday from last weekend as well as a followup he sent Thursday night.

The Golf Channel has suspended anchor Kelly Tilghman for two weeks. Here is my story for the Thursday newspaper.

What's next? I don't know, but I do know Imus initially was suspended before he was canned, and come to think of it I initially and naively shrugged off his comments, so don't ask me.

Ask Rev. Al.

This story started as a paragraph buried at the bottom of my Tuesday newspaper column and now has mushroomed in a way that is starting to give me flashbacks to last April.

I apparently am severely lacking in news judgment on stories such as this.

So rather than weigh in and be dragged into the racially-charged vortex, I'm going to pathetically cower in a politically neutral corner and let readers comment below the way they have been doing by the dozens on the Web site for each incarnation of this story.

Good luck. But please be civil.

Three items in my newspaper column created Internet stirs this Tuesday, which was nice. The sad part was that they happened to be the last three items in the column, especially the very last one, in which a brief paragraph reported an unfortunate remark by the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman that touched off an avalanche of Web links.

Here is the latest version, from the Wednesday paper.

Darn you Roger and Eli for messing with my journalistic judgment!

If I were going to bury the good stuff, I should have just blogged all of it Monday and gotten a few thousand page views out of it.

(I'm starting to worry that if the Giants advance any further in the playoffs Glauber could challenge me in the January standings. He did a bunch of posts today about the Giants' defensive coordinator and the Falcons' head coaching job or some such thing.)

Cornell doesn't have a formal journalism major. Maybe I should have gone to Syracuse. Just kidding.

I have to write a newspaper column now, but before I go here is an important programming note:

Ch. 11, Newsday's Tribune company sibling, is running a "Honeymooners'' marathon that begins at midnight with the essential Christmas episode, which used to run on Christmas Eve but now is a less regularly seen treat.

Other key episodes include Ralph's appearance on a pop music quiz show at 3 p.m. and in a cooking equipment infomercial at 5.

But the most important episode, especially since this is a sports blog, arrives at 2 p.m.. when Ed Norton demonstrates how to address a golf ball properly.

Enjoy.