Inside the Media Tent: The Championship Rounds

Editor's note: Ryan McDermott is the editor of Takoma Park Patch and reported on the 2011 U.S. Open from last week. This is the second in a series of two installments about his experience covering the golf championship. The ran on Bethesda Patch Monday.

Once the tournament started Thursday, the crowds came both on the course and in the media tent. It was a totally different scene from Monday morning. The Talent, fresh off days of rest, came in to relieve the road warriors, who were bugged out on caffeine and cookies from the dining tent.

One way to tell who is the Talent is to find the reporters wearing suits and ties, despite the sweltering heat. Quite often, the Talent end up on TV, so they need to look good. They don’t put poorly dressed people on the Golf Channel, ESPN or NBC.

On Thursday, the Talent talks about predictions, the course and the round in progress. It’s largely speculative. The road warriors, after a few hours of sleep and some more coffee, write about the nuts and bolts of the day: who’s leading, who’s faltering, what holes are giving players trouble and what holes are birdie opportunities.

I almost forgot another way to tell the grinders from the Talent. Both attend the end of the day press conferences with major players in the championship. The Talent usually starts a question with “Can you talk a little about…” There is a casual nature about their questions. They aren’t in a hurry. They sound like used car salesmen. And the fact that the way they sound when they talk on TV is the way they actually talk in real life is mildly disturbing.

The road warriors are more hurried. They ask pointed questions. They ask tough questions. The players tend to recognize them, too, even more than the Talent. They see them every weekend at every tournament. At a press conference with Phil Mickelson, a giant in the sport right now, Mickelson gave Art Spander, a legend among sportswriters and an inveterate grinder, a verbal pat on the back for winning a sports award at the Memorial Tournament a few weeks before in Dublin, Ohio.

The road warriors genuinely care about the players and the sport and the craft of sportswriting. Not that the Talent don’t care, but it’s different.

With Rory McIlroy making easy work of the course for the first three rounds, there wasn’t much drama in the media tent. One reporter said there were two tournaments going: one that McIlroy was playing and one for second place. In fact, when it was over, Jason Day took second, placed eight strokes behind McIlroy and four players were tied for third place, ten strokes behind the Northern Irishman.

I spent my days talking to spectators about the and the My role was less as a golf writer and more as a local reporter seeing how this spectacle affected Bethesda. I got to (one of the few reporters who can effortlessly transition from Talent to grinder), Dan Jenkins and Spander, which was a dream. Those guys write great human stories. They are statistics machines.

Then Sunday came and with McIlory not letting up, it was a day to prewrite stories about his talent and gather facts about the records he was breaking. There was only one moment Sunday when the whole press tent was collectively locked on the two large TVs broadcasting the tournament: when McIlroy hit his tee shot on the 10th hole, a par 3.

It was the same hole where Mickelson dunked his ball in the water Thursday, to start his disastrous slide to end at seven-over-par. McIlroy stuck a nice shot on the green, then the ball checked up and started to roll back toward the hole. All the air was sucked out of the media tent. We knew he was going to win. The lead he had amassed was insurmountable. But as the ball broke back at the hole you would have thought it was the shot to win the tournament. The ball did not roll in for a hole-in-one, but it did finally rest about six inches from the cup. The press tent gasped as one.

The kid was putting on a show. It’s like he knew we were bored in there watching him dominate.

A few holes later, a week’s worth of grueling coverage – my one shot at standing in as a grinder – was almost over. At first, I couldn’t remember much of it. It was almost like I’d blacked out, like the first time I took the stage in my high school musical. It was a rush and then it was over.

I felt an overwhelming sadness come over me. The week had been long, but I’d never had so much fun in my life. I was going to miss waking up every day, fighting traffic around 495, pulling into Holton-Arms and taking the shuttle to the media tent.

Then Flemma came bounding up to my desk with his trademark grin. It was undoubtedly welcome at that moment.

“Feel my shirt,” he said. “It’s triple Eqyptian cotton.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.