This afternoon, Brandel Chamblee is as usual liking the sound of his own voice a little more than anybody listening, including the guys sitting with him on the Golf Channel set in front of a green screen that might actually be a window onto Augusta National Golf Club.
He’s doing that thing where he works too hard to make scripted content sound like it’s fresh off the top of his head.
Elsewhere on the grounds, Fred MacMurray, or maybe it was Fred Ridley, mumbled some about LIV Golf players and then some more about the lengthening of No. 13 and five minutes later no one remembered what he said or why he was invited to the podium, and that was good because he’s not the show and he knows it.
Out of all his rattling on, Chamblee made some sense when he said of the three favorites among Masters oddsmakers — Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm — that they succeed in the game because they keep the simple things simple.
That might be what the Masters gets right and needs to this year, with all the side winds swirling around the artificially lit shrubs and trees and flowers that look so nice on TV, and global politics, and courtroom drama. Get inside the ropes and play, no matter how you got in, just play. It’s simple.
Chamblee could learn a lesson.
This week in golf and American democracy
The Masters
April 6-9, Augusta National Golf Club, Augusta, Ga.
Tennessee v. peaceful protest
Nashville: Legislature expels three members who don’t like gun deaths.
Out there
Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News
April 17 (tentative): Delaware Superior Court
Grey Goatee Golf Association (3GA) Tour
April 22: 18th Annual Bent Shaft Classic, Capitol City Golf Club, Lacey, Wash.
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