SUCH A SHAME BBC LOST OPEN

KEN BROWN off the course is every bit the avuncular enthusiast suggested by his popular Ken on the Course segments that will illuminate the BBC’s 60th anniversary coverage of The Open at St Andrews this week. Now 58, the one-time rebel of professional golf has developed his broadcasting skills to become the ideal foil to the Corporation’s voice of golf, Peter Alliss. Quietly, he has done it all. A Ryder Cup player at 20 and tournament winner at 21 — ‘if you had my career now, you’d make £30million,’ he says — he has served on the European Tour’s board and is still on the Ryder Cup board. Now he has just published his first book, One Putt, a series of observations on the game’s black art from one of the few who ever mastered it. Brown was only 20 when he first thought about a future in broadcasting. ‘I was driving home from The Open at Turnberry in 1977 having finished about 90 minutes before the final group and the time went by like it didn’t exist listening to the radio,’ he says. ‘There was Dai Rees and Tommy Horton and their descriptions as Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson contested their duel were just brilliant. I was thinking I wouldn’t mind a stab at it one day.’ He has worked for the BBC on every Open this century and, like many of us, he is sad that live coverage will end next year. ‘It is a terrible shame for the viewing public there are not one or two weeks where you can watch the golf on the Beeb,’ says Brown (below). ‘If you grew up in the Nick Faldo generation, watching golf on the BBC was a critical part of your education.’ Fellow commentator Andrew Cotter feels Brown is a perfectionist, saying: ‘He has books filled with notes from past Opens and you can be sure he will be studying those at St Andrews.’ And what does Brown feel about the old maestro by his side — what has it been like been working with Alliss? ‘It’s always an adventure,’ he says. ‘His timing is remarkable. At Arnold Palmer’s last Masters we had six lines from Henry Longhurst about him that were

truly beautiful and Peter was to read them. But we were not the host broadcaster, so you could start reading and the pictures could cut away from Palmer and you’d look silly. ‘Anyway, Peter started reading after Arnold had finished and then, just as Palmer got to the clubhouse door and waved, Peter was reading the final line: “He did all the right things at all the right time”. ‘Just as he finished, Palmer went through the door. You can’t imagine how hard it is to time it that well. It was genius.’ Brown envisages continuing when the BBC is limited to a two-hour highlights show in 2017 and would not be surprised if Alliss, who will be 86, does so as well.