CBS Sports doesn't do a lot of LPGA Tour broadcasts - perhaps a handful of tournaments per year.  The tournament that is broadcast has to buy time and crew from CBS to produce and broadcast the event.  The Kraft Nabisco Championship is one of the events that does just that.  They buy time so that CBS Sports will broadcast the Sunday back nine on their air.

For the final thirty minutes alone, I'm very glad that the KNC continues this practice.  To that end, I'm sure that CBS Sports is happy as well.  The end of the tournament was as spectacular as you will see anywhere and, perhaps, the best ever in the history of this event.  (There are arguments for other recent finishes, including Aree Song and Karrie Webb's final shots.)

Still, the coverage that we got from CBS at Mission Hills was kind of scattered. 

I love Verne Lundquist.  If I hired someone to do play by play of my life, he would be in the top three - along with Gus Johnson ("HA, HA!  Ryan just made a per-fect cup of coffee!") and Kevan Harlan ("Ryan with NO REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE in that blog post!"). 

With those images in your head, we'll explain more after the jump.

The rest of the booth left a lot to be desired, though.  Beth Daniel is still figuring it out in there.  Billy Kratzert doesn't cover this tour and he could not get a yardage & club combo to save his life.  Doesn't the LPGA Tour have some kind of tie in with SkyCaddie?!

Bradley Klein of Golfweek points out the problem:

We saw 20 drives struck on Sunday, but not once did anyone say how far it was to this bunker or that dogleg, and even after we saw a fleeting reference to Lincicome averaging 270 yards driving distance on the LPGA, there was no effort to quantify the advantage this gave her.

We saw 31 iron shots/full wedge approaches to greens on par-4s and par-5s Sunday. By my count, we got the yardage 18 times and the club only 14 times.

Of 158 shots telecast Sunday, 79 (exactly half) were putts, and yet we were told the distance on only five of them. OK, we’ll excuse the 21 tap-ins.

Doing the math, that means that we got 59 iron shots and 28 of them were par 3 tee shots.  The overall pacing is good, but with so little information on these shots, it is the equivalent of watching me blindly hit to driving range targets. 

Meanwhile, on NBC Sports, there is a mic on the caddie to tell me what the guy had for lunch at the turn.  C'mon!

Also, the camera work was kind of bizarre.  At one point, a cameraman seemed to close to Kristy McPherson that she might strike him with her backswing.  Over at 18, they were using that crane cam like they were trying to auction it on eBay.  Look!  It follows the ball to the green!

I'm sure that the Kraft Nabisco didn't pay for the Deluxe Wash with CBS Sports, but it certainly behooves everyone involved to give this telecast the top notched, detailed coverage that it deserves.