Netflix cameraman Dan Wilson follows Harry Higgs as he walks through the tunnel to the tee of the par-3 16th hole during the third round of the 2022 WM Phoenix Open. (Photo: Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports)
Golfweek: If you were to run a golf television network, and come on, you know you’d be great at this, what should be done? Give me your two-minute elevator pitch.
Harry Higgs: I don’t know if I’d be great at it. And, just simply because I can see about 75 to 80 percent of what goes into covering golf, right, whether that’s print or television, I know that I don’t have a great understanding of the other, we’ll call it 25 percent and that 25 percent is probably the most vital.
I read plenty of golf coverage, right? From every one of the people on your staff to many others.
But I think it’s part of the kind of Tiger Woods hangover, if we take it in a very, very, 30-thousand-foot view, where really no one had to be any good at their jobs.
And I’m not saying that people weren’t, because they were, but really no one had to be any good at their jobs within the golf kind of landscape because Tiger was playing, Tiger was winning and shit just sold because he was showing up We are certainly entering an era where that’s going to happen less and less, if at all I’m obviously rooting for it to happen as much as it possibly can because that just helps out everybody involved.
So my kind of elevator pitch would just be, obviously, keep doing what you’re doing but also don’t be afraid to tell the more difficult story or storyline.
I obviously live golf and everything, right? And as for the division (with LIV Golf) and all that stuff, I don’t necessarily agree but I don’t blame any of these guys for leaving.
But we joke back and forth — they took all the assholes. They took all the villains. And that’s a problem. They took some of our best players, too. But those who have left haven’t put this in a spot where it’s like, oh, shit, you know, all the great players are gone and playing somewhere else. That’s not the case, but they took some of the ones who would have stories written about them maybe in a negative light with kind of negative connotations. And OK, that’s kind of a driving force for people to read your story or for people to turn their television on. I struggle with this.
Most of my irritation is not with the print side. It’s with the airing of the golf tournament for four days. I get how hard it is to get 156-plus storylines in, but it just always feels like we take the easy way out, and a lot of this is the Tour’s fault, too. I know that they’re starting to have more and more control over the product and then it’s just another thing that’s like, ‘if you guys aren’t any good at your jobs doing this, then like we’re gonna all be put in worse off position.’
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