Mastering the Belfry
As you’re reading a sports blog there’s a fair chance you might just be a sports fan and, as such, over recent weeks you’ve been spoilt with a cascade of output featuring , and .
As if three World Cups were not enough for you, this week will be bringing you two other outstanding sporting events as in the crucial World Group play-off tie at Wimbledon and Europe’s best golfers battle it out over for the British Masters title, top-class tennis and golf from two of the most famous sporting venues in the world.
Those of you with interactive options will have no excuse for missing comprehensive live coverage of both events; Thursday to Sunday, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ ONE and ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TWO will have dedicated around 27 hours of air time. It is always a great thrill returning to the Belfry, no other venue (worldwide) has hosted golf’s Ryder Cup on four occasions and it is now a welcome home for the , a tournament that is a real highlight on The European Tour.
This is the first time since that the event has been held in September. It had been held in May in recent years but has moved to avoid a clash with the PGA Tour’s prestigious Players' Championship at Sawgrass.
Last year our cameras saw and he’s out to defend his title against a whole gang of Europe’s leading golfers. Among the big names in the field are Ryder Cup heroes Paul Casey, Darren Clarke, David Howell, Colin Montgomerie, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood, who comes off the back of in Germany last week. European stalwarts Miguel Angel Jiminéz, Michael Campbell, Niclas Fasth and Thomas Bjorn, plus South Africans Charl Schwartzel and Richard Sterne, give it an international flavour.
Those of you who tuned in for our Walker Cup coverage two weeks ago will be excited to hear that Northern Ireland’s teenage sensation, , will make this his first professional tournament and will be hoping for the sort of form that saw him win the leading amateur prize at this year’s Open Championship. Ironically, it is a former British amateur champion who joins our commentary team at The Belfry: Welshman was The ‘Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year’ in 1984 and was a regular on The European Tour in the 80’s and 90’s. He joins our regular on-course team of Paul Eales and Maureen Madill. Peter Alliss, who co-designed The Brabazon course, will - as ever - hold the fort along with Ken Brown and Andrew Cotter in the commentary box. Hazel Irvine will be presenting the four days but not before she has teamed up with Paul Casey in Wednesday’s pro-am.
(Having just broken the news to Hazel that she is due to play with Paul she has since bombed up the M40 to The Belfry and to date has hit 300 balls on the range. I’m sure she will update you on how the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport team gets on with the current World Match Play champion! Other names in the pro-am include Ronan Keating, Jamie Redknapp and James Nesbitt.)
We often get very positive feedback from you about our ‘guest’ commentators, players who have finished their morning rounds and come and spend an hour or so giving us a unique insight in to the course, conditions, players and gossip. We have lined up two or three big names for Thursday and Friday, so tune in to see whose arm we’ve twisted. It will be particularly interesting to hear what the players make of the redesigned sixth hole. With recent changes to the third hole, the front nine is now a real challenge and balances nicely with the back nine with its infamous watery .
As ever Ken Brown will preview many of these challenges as well as reflecting on how The Belfry has become environmentally friendly. In the woods, multiple bird and bat boxes have been installed and no water is drawn from the mains supply to irrigate the resort's three golf courses. Waste water is used from the hotel instead… I’m sure Peter will have a line on that!
Ken has also been busy creating animations on real helicopter fly-over of the holes. We have had mixed feedback on our virtual reality hole descriptions and this half-way house of real images with telestration will hopefully prove popular. Do let us know.
And, finally, if you won’t be glued to the box on all four days (how dare you!), then you might be interested to know that Friday at The Belfry is ‘Ladies Day’. The organisers have designated that on Friday 21 September the first 50 ladies to arrive will get free entry.
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Transmission Times
THURSDAY 20 September, 1100–1300 ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳i; 1330–1800 ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TWO
FRIDAY 21 September, 1100–1300 ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳i; 1400–1800 ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TWO
SATURDAY 22 September, 1500–1830, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TWO
SUNDAY 23 September, 1400–1800, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TWO
