Sports television has unique European flavor on Fourth of July weekend
By: Jim Williams
Examiner Sports Columnist
July 6, 2009
This weekend was a European vacation for U.S. television viewers as we watched two awesome days of Breakfast at Wimbledon and two days of the Tour de France in Monte Carlo. Throw in Sir Nick Faldo, who covered the AT&T National from Congressional and it truly was a royal weekend of sports.
NBC Sports' Breakfast at Wimbledon crew of Ted Patterson, Marry Carillo and John McEnroe were perfect in their coverage of Roger Federer's record 15th major title. There is no question that it will become an instant classic as Andy Roddick pushed Federer to a record-setting five-set battle.
NBC Sports did not miss a beat -- including the entrance of Pete Sampras. For the next four-plus hours we hung on every point as Roddick made Federer earn that 15th major.
McEnroe was brilliant with his post-match interview of Sampras, Rod Laver, and Bjorn Borg.
Carillo did a masterful job of making Serena Williams' straight-sets march to the title over her sister Venus far more interesting than it was.
About 1,200 miles south of London in the beautiful city of Monte Carlo, Versus scored big with the first two days of the Tour de France. You can't go wrong with the combination of great sports and the beauty of the French Rivera as the backdrop.
The broadcast team of Phil Ligett, Paul Sherwen and the entire Versus crew did a great job of not overdoing the return of Lance Armstrong after a three-year layoff.
Finally at Congressional, the CBS golf crew of Sir Nick Faldo, Jim Nantz, producer Lance Barrow and their crew did a wonderful job of covering the AT&T National. For the first time since the tournament started the host was in the hunt for the title on final day of his own tournament.
A great show back stateside was TNT's coverage of the wild finish of the Coke Zero Daytona 400 where Tony Stewart won with a major crash on the final lap. Stewart was able to survive the wreck that took former teammate Kyle Busch out of the race.
ESPNEWS' coverage of the tragic death of former Titans and Ravens quarterback Steve McNair was comprehensive and not sensational. Perhaps the traditional all-news channels could learn something from the sports outlet.
Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this! on washingtonexaminer.com.
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