Position A, Sandy

There's weird doings afoot on my televisual screen, and it's not just the glass of Cooper's Sparky I'm viewing it through. It's that there golfing tournament, the Strayan Masters, in which it is oft said, usually by nasal one-armed golfing drunk Jack Newton, 'The Tradition Continues'. Except, in this year's Masters, the tradition does not continue. It fails to continue. It is, indeed, discontinuous. And there's nothing more profoundly objectionable than discontinuities in one's tradition.

It's not the fault of Tigger, or the decision to get him in for the tourney. Paying three mill to get the golfing world's favourite mobile media circus (and reasonably handy hacker) down under looks like chickenfeed when set against the saturation media coverage, ratings increase, box-office benefits and sponsorship exposure thus produced. It's not even the shift from Huntingdale - the, erm, traditional home of the Masters - to Kingston Heath, the tight and twisty Monaco street circuit of the Melbourne sandbelt.

No, it's the fucking coverage.

Golf should be covered the same way cricket is. By the same people, on the same network, for the rest of time, or until all the presenters wither and die of old age. Any attempt to remove Richie, Bill, Tony and Ian from the Nine cricket commentary team will result in me coming around to your house and setting fire to something important, like your cat, or your pubic hair. I don't care that they're old and shit. They ARE cricket commentary. Conservative, old-fashioned, long-form sports need conservative, old-fashioned, long-form commentary. And so it is with golf. I don't even like golf. I don't play it - not in a form that is recognisable AS golf, anyway - and I don't watch it. Except for the Australian majors, on lazy summer afternoons, with a beer in my hand and an absence of thoughts in my head, listening to the gentle discussion between Seven's commentators. While waiting for the ad break in the cricket to finish so I can flick back to something more watchable, of course.

So what happened when I turn my TV on this afternoon to check out the end of the first round at Kingston Heath?

Fucking Warren Smith. That's what happened.

Warren Smith is a rugby league commentator for Fox. He's OK at that - shouty, random, annoying, but it goes with the territory. He tried being a motorsport commentator, briefly, before someone at Fox actually listened to the playback of him and Kevin Magee dribbling and fumbling through the call of world superbike races and changed the locks on the motorsport studio door.

It doesn't end there, either. Not only do we have a B-grade football commentator, but we have Mark fucking Nicholas and his pink shirts, filling in time before the cricket season. And to top it off, there's the promise of the most egregious man on Australian television, more ubiquitous than chlamydia and equally as entertaining, Eddie McGuire on hosting duties.

There are rules to summer sports coverage. Nine does the cricket and Seven does the golf and the tennis. That is the fucking END of it. Nine doesn't do the golf, because they will only fuck it up. And have, by sticking Collingwood apologists and cricket presenters on screen in place of Sandy Roberts, Pat Welsh and Bwuce McAvaney. Headhunting a couple of colour guys from Seven and ringing-in the Dark Shark from the Golf Channel in the US just ain't gonna cut it.

This is bollocks, and will fail. As sure as Jack Newton swims in circles.

The Doctor is OUT.