For Rich Lerner, Golf’s Longest Day(™) started at 8 a.m. The Golf Channel‘s lead studio host won’t be house till after midnight, when Lerner nonetheless plans to eat a “full dinner,” he informed The Hollywood Reporter. Lerner, like his colleagues and viewers, has simply as large an urge for food for qualifying golf, and immediately, the “open” spirit of golf’s U.S. Open supplies.
The morning started with Lerner’s “feet up, BS-ing” with fellow on-air expertise and producers, he says — the “coffee is flowing.” However quickly it’s time to tee off on 10 hours of unique dwell protection of ultimate U.S. Open qualifiers from 10 separate websites, from Buy, New York to York, Ontario. (Sure, you’ll be able to qualify for the USA Open in Canada.)
From his climate-controlled spot within the Stamford, Connecticut studio, Lerner will quarterback the motion, passing off to 11 separate reporters within the discipline. If that looks as if a compelled cross-sport analogy, blame Lerner. As we speak is the NFL Draft for golf, he stated, each when it comes to witnessing amateurs change into professionals and the behind-the-scenes scrambling by dozens of Lerner’s colleagues in HQ’s battle room. (The Versant-owned channel’s coordinating producer Matt Hegarty is head coach right here.)
“This is one that we really look forward to, because this is one is part of our DNA,” Lerner says whereas on a writing break. “This one says we are all about the sport of golf and nothing else in a way that no other day does.”
“Golf’s Longest Day” is “one of the singular Golf Channel days of the year,” he provides. It’s undoubtedly, because the identify suggests, its longest. However it isn’t the toughest — these could be the Masters, the U.S. Open itself, and even the Drive, Chip and Putt Nationwide Finals.
“Oddly, it doesn’t play as being grueling, for whatever reason,” Lerner stated from the midpoint in his Monday. “It’s just a ton of fun.”
As I write this, some 650 golfers — some you’ve heard of and others you by no means will — battle for one of many remaining few spots on the U.S. Open, the annual main championship event that appropriately ends on Father’s Day Sunday. However immediately, weeks previous to the true event, PGA Tour professionals and former main championship winners (together with former U.S. Open winners) are trying to fend off UPS drivers for a June 18 tee time at Shinnecock Hills Golf Membership in Southampton New York. (Properly, one UPS driver: Nick Barrett, presently competing in Rockville, Maryland.)
The democratic nature of the Open is as “pure” as sports activities get, Lerner says. “Your station in life, your bank account — none of that matters. And that is, I think, what is so beautiful about about the game and this particular championship.”
As we speak is “not about a rating,” Lerner says. It’s a couple of totally different form of sporting occasion.
Normally, sports activities followers “tune in to see the big star,” Lerner says. Not immediately. “On this day, I think most golf fans tune in to see someone they have never heard of. Hopefully by 10 o’clock at night, you’ll be so invested in that person’s story that you can’t turn away. That’s real drama.”
