TV VIEW:DAVID LIVINGSTONE, I presume? That was the immediate thought when thunderstorms hovered over the Oakland Hills golf course, thunder and lightning forcing initially the suspension and then the postponement of the third round of the US PGA Championship.
The aforementioned Mr Livingstone is an anchorman for Sky Sports and traditionally pops up when US television goes to advertising breaks. And so he's more than an occasional presence during majors broadcast on the satellite network.
He offers a polished presence but occasionally suffers through having to fill screen time by swapping banalities, usually with Butch Harmon. Given the inclement weather that assailed Detroit during Friday's second round, again forcing a stop in play, Livingstone was on screen even more than usual.
His early questions to Harmon - formerly Tiger Woods's coach and now technical guru to Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson - were full of enthusiasm as he tried, on behalf of the viewer, to elicit insights into technical aspects of the game. That zeal though gradually dissipated, as did the quality of questions, as the two realised they were now stuck on air for an indeterminate time.
Harmon is seldom short of an answer and can be informative. But without fail his conversation returns to his current proteges or his time spent with the world number one. It inevitably starts to grate, especially when he insists, whether in studio booth or commentary box, on repeatedly referring to "Ernie" and "Phil".
Of course he's entitled to call them by their Christian names, but why then does he refer to most others by their surnames?
It just reinforces the cloying chumminess of Sky's coverage when referencing the elite of world golf. Commentators Ewen Murray - coach to Darren Clarke - and Bruce Critchley strike a reverential note chock-full of superlatives.
Sky's coverage of sport leads the way in terms of technical resources and cameras covering the action from all angles - but that fawning tone mars much of their work, and their golf coverage is especially saccharine.
Success in professional sport requires conspicuous mental and physical qualities - which distinguish its practitioners from those who play sport for recreation. That does not, however, make the sport itself any more complex.
Holing a three-foot, uphill putt with no break is not to be equated with splitting the atom or solving world hunger. And the accompanying Sky commentary with its stock soundtrack of "wonderful" and "brilliant" comes across as unnecessary hyperbole. It's also insulting to the viewers.
Hitting a three iron 223 yards over a lake to a pin cut six paces onto the green and making it stop on a sixpence, three feet from the hole: now that's wonderful.
There is little counterbalance to Sky's coverage, no bite to the musings. It's what distinguishes BBC's golf coverage or those of the American networks who have Johnny Miller or Ireland's own David Feherty behind a microphone.
Miller is not afraid to be critical; Feherty's humour can be sharply pointed. Indeed Feherty and the BBC's Peter Alliss share a similar philosophy to the sport, albeit as products of different generations they differ in style.
Alliss has never doffed his cap to the modern generation of golfers - and that includes Woods - and is not afraid to be critical.
Feherty's witticisms frequently come with a steel core.
Sky has no such presence. In recent times they have taken to aping BBC's approach. Over the weekend Howard Clark was cast in the Ken Brown role - dropping balls on greens, in the rough. It's all done, though, with such po-faced solemnity.
Sky's post-round interviewer Tim Barter has excelled in his duties, primarily because he asks players to respond with more than hackneyed soundbites. His pre-recorded, magazine-style interview with Pádraig Harrington on the Irishman's British Open triumph was a classic example.
Once it became apparent on Saturday that the weather delay was likely to last a few hours Sky decided to show a replay of the 18-hole playoff - which went to 19 - between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate that decided the recent US Open.
It was a decision that would have had viewers switching channels in their droves.
Whenever rain stopped play at Wimbledon or a cricket Test match, BBC would adopt a similar approach but with one crucial difference: they would rummage the archives to find a classic encounter but it would generally date back anywhere from 10 to 25 years. They wouldn't go back just a few weeks as Sky did.
Even the most ardent golfing enthusiast would baulk at the prospect of watching a shot-by-shot, three-and-a-half-hour reprise on a Saturday night of a sporting collision still fresh in the memory.
The weather is, thankfully, beyond Sky's control but in future they might do better to introduce an occasional rumble of thunder, even if only metaphorical, in the commentary box rather than those relentless blue skies.
