Fox Sports’ U.S. Open leaderboard goes out at an inopportune time
Oh, opening-day jitters. Thursday marked the first day of Fox Sports’ 12-year, $1 billion deal to broadcast the U.S. Open. It’s a huge deal, a tense moment for a network not known for its golf coverage. Naturally, as always seems to happen in these situations, something went south right off the bat.
The leaderboard, which is a fairly essential bit of golf technology, suddenly went out. That left everyone watching with the disorienting feeling of not knowing what the hell was going on at the tournament, which usually only happens when you’re actually on the grounds and have had a couple $10 beers.
“Of the 74 million people that are here on behalf of Fox Sports, somehow we don’t have our leaderboard,” Joe Buck said, falling on the Fox sword. “Somebody unplugged it so once we can find that outlet, we can plug it back in.”
In place of a leaderboard graphic, Fox resorted to showing the physical leaderboard on course at Chambers Bay.
Soon enough, though, the plug was found, the hamsters encouraged to start running, and whatever other technical wizardry was necessary to get the leaderboard back up was completed, and everyone continued happily onward.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter.
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