Matt Cooper

By Matt Cooper Last updated: 19th April 2010

Matt reflects on how Augusta appears on your TV screens.

When I was looking through the photographs posted by the American blogger Ryan Ballangee of Waggleroom.com (who was lucky enough to spend Wednesday at Augusta National) I found myself on the way to finally putting two and two together.

Although not professional images they gave a great insight into the Augusta National course and reminded me that the property is wide open - his pictures from around the 16th, for example, showed more than just the tee, green, lake and galleries. It showed the areas beyond - the empty spaces between and around holes that we all know are there but never ever see.

It got me thinking about how every Masters, even though I always enjoy the experience, I find myself curiously desperate for open space. I've always blamed it on spending four days peering at the TV screen every afternoon and evening.

But it is actually more than that. Think about all those TV pictures you have seen down the years and ask yourself when you ever saw an establishing shot. Compare it to almost every other golf event when the broadcaster will, at some point, use a camera-shot from the top of the cherry-picker, or from a camera perched on top of a building that gives us a sense of the entire course.

We never see this sort of thing at Augusta. More to the point, we rarely see anything other than a perfectly framed shot of every hole - and every year the perfectly framed shots are the same ones.

I had a quick chat with Ryan on Twitter about this and he agreed: "Yeah, typically it is shot very close in to create that intimate feel."

Pity I'm weird enough to not feel intimate but a little bit claustrophobic.

Matt Cooper