Live From the U.S. Open: USGAs Kevin Landy, Meg Kelly, Aya Johnson Discuss World Feed and Prepping The LACC

Live From the U.S. Open: USGA s Kevin Landy, Meg Kelly, Aya Johnson Discuss World Feed and Prepping The LACC USGA, NBC Sports, NEP work hand in hand on the group effort By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Friday, June 16, 2023 - 1:12 pm

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It's Day 2 of the U.S. Open Championship at The Los Angeles Country Club (LACC), and, for USGA Senior Director, Broadcasting and Production, Kevin Landy and his team, the past year (and then some) has been spent working with club management to figure out a broadcast-production plan that would work for a country club split by Wilshire Boulevard and also introduce a course that very few people have ever seen either in person or on TV.

It's a gem that people never knew about, Landy explains, and everyone is finding out how special this place is. George Thomas, the architect, designed a course where you could play every hole very differently each time you played it. And that creates drama for the USGA.

Wilshire Boulevard separates LACC into the North Course, which is where the Championship is being played, and the South Course. Once again, the USGA finds itself with two compounds: a smaller one with the North Course and the main compound on the other side of Wilshire at the South Course.

From left: USGA's Meg Kelly, Kevin Landy, and Aya Johnson in the compound at the 2023 U.S. Open at The Los Angeles Country Club

It was similar to what we had at Shinnecock [on Long Island], says Landy. [Production and Operations Manager] Meg Kelly was a big part of this plan, working since January to figure out how we were going to move people and equipment across the street as all we had was a tunnel that was about 8 ft. wide.

Kelly describes the tunnel as akin to a ride at Disney World - keep your hands and arms inside. When the USGA was informed that the team wasn't going to be able to use it for cart traffic, the plan to deliver two trucks (an NEP fiber truck and the NBC follow truck for storing cases and related kit) and a lot of the equipment (including 270 golf carts) straight to the North Course turned out to be prescient.

NBC has been a great partner, she says. We worked with their crew to figure out what we needed to have on the South Course and what needed to be over on the North Course. We've pivoted a few times, even since Monday, but it has been working out.

The course itself is very tight, with tees on top of greens on top of other tees. But Landy says volunteer members of the South California Golf Association have done a great job in helping carts get through the crowds and between the ropes so that talent, crew, and gear could get to where they needed to go.

We were deathly afraid that even just 22,000 people on property - which is way lower than the usual Open with 30,000 or more people - would interfere with our ability to move these people around the course, he adds. I've been sweating it out since we got here, but so far so good.

Positioning of the NBC Sports broadcast towers and the USGA's world-feed broadcast towers was important because club management wanted to make sure the clubhouse was completely visible. The 18th and 9th greens are very close together, and NBC has a tower at both greens whereas the world feed has a tower only at 9.

It has worked out well. We're able to see both the 9th and 18th greens, Kelly says. The focus of the assignment is the 18th green as we need that for the world feed.

Sixty cables pass through the tunnel, transporting the camera and audio signals from the North Course to the compound on the South Course. The total length of fiber on the course is 160,400 ft.

Ultimately, says Kelly, we use the NEP ESU unit for distribution to NEP ND7 and ND1, which support the main NBC shows; Supershooter 9, which supports Featured Groups; NBC's Newbert double-wide trailer, which supports Live From; and NEP Supershooter 8 and ST8, which we use for the world feed.

Landy says having NEP as facilities vendor for both NBC Sports and the USGA has been beneficial, allowing shortcuts and economies of scale: We have NEP's full attention, and it has been really helpful for us.

Making the World Feed The world feed reaches 192 countries and territories, with seven rightsholders onsite: three from Japan, Sky UK, TSN from Canada, Telefonica from Spain, and Canal Plus from France.

The world-feed production rides the NBC Sports production, avoiding commercials, English-language on-camera interviews, and features that wouldn't make sense to the international audience. It makes use of the broadcaster's 59 cameras and also has three unilateral cameras to cut around the NBC Sports show.

Our world-feed producer Ray Jacobs also does the Masters and the PGA Championship, says Landy, and director Emmett Lockman has been working with us forever. Jacobs has all of that experience that translates to success for us.

Covering international golfers like Australia's Cam Smith is a focus for the world-feed production team.

Adds Kelly, The goal for the first two days is to show every international player at least once because you don't know if they're gonna make the cut or not. And [Tech Manager] Ethan Ritz from our team communicates to the camera guys to make sure everyone is showcased.

The other big news for both NBC Sports and the world feed is the use of Shot Link data, giving new depth to the coverage, Landy says. It will be very helpful in creating new storylines. The graphics information coming off the course will be a little deeper and richer; we're excited about that. It also helps feed a lot of data into the USGA app.

The camera operators grab the shots, and Shot Link grabs the data, and then it's up to the announce team of Luke Elvy and Shane Bacon to tell the stories.

What we ne

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