On Ian Baker-Finch

Ian Baker-Finch seems like a nice guy. He was, for a period, a very good golfer. He won the Open Championship and then lost his game (sounds like someone else this blog loves...). At one point it got so bad that he missed the opening fairway at St. Andrews. The opening fairway at St. Andrews is approximately 2 football fields wide. I mean, I could miss it, but Ian Baker-Finch is a professional golfer. A professional golfer shouldn't miss that fairway unless he gets shot on his downswing. Well after Ian hit the worst golf shot in the history of professional golf, he retired and joined the ABC broadcast team. This was way back when ABC actually covered golf and Peter Aliss (God love him) was a staple on American airwaves joining the late, great Bob Rosburg, the late great Dave Marr and the always entertaining because of his ridiculous southern accent Steve Melnyk ("DOOOO-val with a five-airon"). Anyway, when ABC gave up golf (retaining the Open Championship only), Baker-Finch was scooped up by the CBS golf team. (CBS, it seems, will give anyone an announcing contract provided they used to play and have a funny accent. At some point I will write 10,000 words about the CBS announce team.) So now Ian Baker-Finch has a job on the premier announcing squad. He handles Amen Corner at Augusta and at most other tournaments gets the 17th tower, a fairly prestigious gig. The problem is Ian Baker-Finch is a crappy announcer. He talks incessantly (I'm always waiting for a player to back off a putt, look up at the tower and tell him to shut the fuck up), says little of importance (he is the King of useless and irrelevant anecdotes...I don't care who player X's neighbor in Scotsdale is!!!), and his charming Aussie accent and Aussie-isms are...well...irritating. For example, he never uses the plural of the word foot. Now hold on, you say, that's common in golf as in "Tiger's got a 12-foot putt". True, I reply, but Baker-Finch extends his use of the singular foot to ridiculous extremes. When a ball lands on the 17th green leaving a putt of 23 feet, Baker-Finch says "Look at that, good shot there, leaves himself 23 foot up the hill...coincidentally that's also the distance between his bed and toilet at his house in Jupiter, Florida, lovely place, great big tree in the back yard, plenty of shade, you can enjoy a cocktail or soda on the back porch and just lovely." Shut up, Ian.

Yesterday, in the final round of the San Diego Open (I refuse to call these tournaments by their sponsor names) played on Monday because of the Saturday fog delay, Ian Baker-Finch joined Sir Nick Faldo in the 18th tower because Jim "Hello Friends" Nantz was already on his way to New Orleans where he is calling the Super Bowl. Well...give Ian an inch he'll take 5280 foot. Non-stop babble from start to finish. Indeed on the last green, Ian started talking when a graphic of All-time Tour Victories was put up showing Snead, Woods and Nicklaus and kept chatting through Billy Horschel's closing birdie and right through Tiger tapping in for the win and didn't shut up until Feherty had grabbed Tiger for the post-round chat. He is the 2013 Verbal Diarrhea Leader in the Clubhouse.