Live From the U.S. Open: USGA's Kevin Landy on the 2022 World Feed Efforts and the Future of Production By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Saturday, June 18, 2022 - 9:49 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
It was early Friday afternoon at The Country Club in Brookline, MA when I had a chance to catch up with Kevin Landy, USGA, senior director, broadcasting, and production. And while dozens of golfers were on the course being covered by dozens of cameras everyone was keeping one eye on the course and another on an approaching storm.
Kevin Landy, USGA, senior director, broadcasting, and production
The weather is absolutely key, he says. If you can get off to a good Thursday, even if you have bad weather on Friday, you can still get back on schedule by Saturday if it's not a total washout. But there's absolutely nothing you can do except react and be prepared to go from twosomes to threes if necessary to stay on schedule because the networks aren't sitting around waiting for you.
Thankfully the storm missed Brookline and, with exception of a few sprinkles, the 122nd U.S. Open Championship heads into moving day with a chill in the air, winds in the upper teens, and promises of, yes, plenty of moving on the leaderboard. And Landy says the efforts by NBC Sports have been rock solid when it comes to telling the story of this year's championship.
The NBC show, with the drones, side slabs with tracer, regular tracer, pinpoint, and putting graphics they really brought their A game, he says. And it's just wonderful to have that coincide with what has been some great buildup to this event that hopefully will translate into good ratings and, more importantly, great golf on a fabulous golf course.
Landy says live drone shots promise to be an exciting addition to the coverage.
NBC golf director Joe Martin has been fantastic at integrating live drones and that's not easy to do because you always have to know what the situation is and whether it's too close to a player or spectators, he says. But over the next three days you'll ss many beautiful shots as they're going through trees and they're going over ponds.
Those newer tools, like the use of drones and the Fly Cam near the 18th green are the kind of things that only a few years ago would cause consternation among the host club and its members. But increasingly they understand what those technologies mean not only to viewers but how those viewers feel about the club.
Members get excited because it makes the course look so grand with that simple movement that is so cinematic, says Landy of the Fly Cam. That and the jib cameras and SteadiCams to me are what gives an event that A+ feeling. And the Country Club has been so thankful and grateful to us for all the things that we're doing, the way we look on the air, and that's all credit to NBC because they do a hell of a job.
The on-course production includes not only the NBC production team but also other rights holders and even documentary crews.
We've got a lot of people here, as you know, with two featured groups in the morning and afternoon and we've got a featured holes group, he says. And at the same time, we also have a crew from Vox Media who are shooting the PGA version of Formula One's Drive to Survive. So, we've got tons of cameras on the course.
Landy and his team oversee the world feed which will be distributed to more than 190 territories and countries around the world. The world feed is always a complicated dance as the production team can't simply lean into covering golfers from one country the way that NBC Sports and Sky Sports can. U.S Open World Feed Producer Ray Jacobs also produces the Masters and PGA Championship world feed and U.S. Open World Feed Director Emmet Loughran also works alongside Jacobs on the PGA Championship.
I've got two guys who are used to producing and directing golf and, more pointedly, a world feed which is an art, says Landy. We strive to, to be a vanilla telecast and by vanilla, I don't mean bland. I mean it allows multiple countries to consume it and enjoy it by putting their own language on it.
When the field is set for the first two rounds of the U.S. Open one consideration is time zones so that viewers back home will have a chance to see their home nation's golfers.
We look for golfers from Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, or South Africa and are keen on covering those guys in the hours that translate to those territories, says Landy. We want to show the leaders but when NBC Sports go to an American that isn't near the lead, we like to get off their feed and show our international players. We feel that that makes our world feed something that is desirable when we sell these rights.
From a production standpoint the world feed will have a couple of its own Top Tracing units and its own mini-graphical leaderboard.
We've actually added a couple of Top Tracing units this year, so there's theoretically more tracers on the air and I think that golf viewers expect that now, he says. They also expect that mini leaderboard that has Fox originally initiated with constant updates. It's just standard operating procedure for any good golf event.
The Country Club first hosted the U.S. Open in 1913, making it one of the oldest properties to host the U.S. Open. Those older properties are often smaller properties and that can make it challenging to bring in a TV production and large crowds that were unforeseen more than 100 years ago.
The biggest challenge that we faced this week was when we were here on Monday as getting carts and people through the pinch points of one tee and 18 green was taking about 20 minutes, he says. Our guys worked very hard overnight Monday to create a new routing
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
The days are getting longer, the temperatures are rising, and playlists are filling up for the season. With summer around the corner, Spotify's global edito...
29/05/2026
New retro-inspired MPC announced
There are few devices that have gained the status held by Akai Pro's MPC range, and in recent years, the company have s...
29/05/2026
Save up to 30 on acclaimed titles
Following a successful launch at Superbooth 2026, Bjooks have revealed that they will be continuing the Kickstarter campa...
29/05/2026
Binaural monitoring application improved
Genelec have just released an update that brings some powerful new features to their HRTF-based binaural headphone ...
29/05/2026
6 June 2026 at SAE Institute, London, UK
IMSTA FESTA 2026 is almost upon us, with some of the biggest names in pro-audio set to descend upon SAE Institute i...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
Latino Film Institute Fellows Screen Their Short Films at the Egyptian Theatre
The Inclusion Fellowship and Spark Animation Grant uplifts 15 ...
29/05/2026
GLOOKAST LAUNCHES CINNAFILM TACHYON PLUGIN FOR MEDIA PRODUCER AND MEDIA SERVICES
This release first appeared here.
Visit our Tachyon product page or contact...
29/05/2026
May 29 2026, 09:00 (PDT) Dolby and rednote Bring More Immersive Storytelling to...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Youtube exclusive special drops today
Watch now
UKTV today announces another e...
Live From the U.S. Open: USGA's Kevin Landy on the 2022 World Feed Efforts and the Future of Production By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
