Rich Lerner (left) friends from his perch at the Golf Channel desk subsequent to Brandel Chamblee (proper).
NBC Sports
Rich Lerner’s six-foot-four body is draped throughout a tiny folding chair in opposition to the wall of a Golf Channel studio. A dozen ft away, real-life tv is being created in entrance of real-life cameras on the studio’s aft facet. Our perch — and its proximity to the motion — requires that we converse in voices barely above a whisper.
It’s Tuesday at the Open Championship and Lerner’s deep blue eyes have narrowed, revealing a furrowed forehead. From the folding chair beside him, I’m lobbing Lerner questions on his concepts and strategy. I wish to find out about the origins of his artistic skillset, however he’s unsure what I imply.
“I’m afraid I don’t know the answer,” he tells me after a pause. “Can you ask that question a different way?”
I contemplate elevating my quantity however shortly assume higher. The punishment for noise is a shushing at the fingers of the relatively terrifying manufacturing supervisor whose job it’s to keep up absolute silence on set … and who it appears would take nice pleasure in tossing out Gandhi or Mother Theresa if both dared to interject at a decibel-level registerable to even the studio’s most delicate microphone. This state of affairs isn’t significantly conducive to understanding English language nuances like inflection and intonation, which can be guilty for Lerner’s confusion. (The abject concern I really feel for the manufacturing supervisor — who has already silenced me with a fury unfelt since at the least the fifth grade — is probably going additionally contributing.)
After a pause of my very own, I attempt a blunter strategy.
“I guess the question I’m asking is … do you consider yourself a writer?”
Now Lerner’s eyes widen. A lightbulb switches on. He smiles, then waits, then solutions.
“As opposed to what?”
THE POINT is that Rich Lerner has what your mom would name “the gift of gab.” His phrases seem to move from the similar magic geothermal supply that powers Old Faithful: stunning, dependable, entrancing. And if his on-air speaking appears like writing, nicely, that’s as a result of it’s.
Lerner’s three many years working for the Golf Channel and NBC have proven him to be amongst the most succesful talkers in sports activities tv — capable of shapeshift from visitors cop to sparring accomplice to essayist in actual time. His skill to string seamlessly between these delicate and infrequently overlapping roles has made him a fixture on exhibits like Golf Central and Live From, the place his job is principally to make the lengthy, uneven hours of stay studio protection really feel brisk and clean. Anyone who’s ever seen him pivot between completely unrelated segments (or away from a tirade delivered by accomplice and good good friend Brandel Chamblee) can attest. When the cameras activate, Lerner’s items for propulsion and intentionality sparkle in opposition to the backdrop of a format with a nagging tendency for the reverse.
On one current Saturday, Lerner teed up fellow host Mark Rolfing to ship a staggering statistic about Scottie Scheffler’s Sunday match struggles with out even asking a query, feathering in a collection of stats about the former Masters’ champ’s struggles earlier than serving up an alley-oop to Rolfing so crisp his analyst might’ve closed his eyes and completed the bucket. On one other Tuesday, a segment-opening quip about the “winds of change” flowed so gracefully right into a query for PGA Tour coverage board member Peter Malnati about the complicated geopolitics of Saudi Arabia that Malnati himself appeared not sure about whether or not he was being arrange (he wasn’t).
This is Lerner’s reward: the skill to maintain the dialog shifting with out making you, watching at dwelling, conscious that you simply’ve been listening for 5 or 15 or 45 minutes. His ability for carrying dense, nuanced discussions with facile agility and ease — significantly in the present period of golf and geopolitics — makes him just about a hero to his coworkers.
“That’s the thing that makes Rich … Rich,” says Matt Hegarty, his lead producer at NBC and good friend of almost three many years. “He can talk off of basically anybody in the world, and he can talk golf with anybody in the world.”
It helps that Chamblee is commonly the individual with whom Rich riffs on golf. Individually, the two males are amongst the nerdiest golf talkers alive, obsessing over historical past and trivialities so esoteric it’d flip even the diehards to mud. But collectively their penchant for the small particulars has helped them shortly turn into the form of host/analyst tandem viewers hunt down for soothing leisure, knowledgeable evaluation, or most frequently, each.
“He can just do it all,” Chamblee says. “He has such a ferocious appetite for information and for the tapestry of a story. It’s back-of-the-neck-hair-raising stuff to watch him work. He comes in at these events — I don’t know how he keeps track of the golf, there’s so much going on — and yet he gives so much attention to the things we do.”
Some of Lerner’s skill comes from a showman’s sense of timing, and a few from a real ardour for the material. But most of it’s merely a symptom of Rich Lerner’s Great Skill, which is that he’s not a broadcaster or a TV host or perhaps a “personality.” It’s again to that first query — and the reply Rich thinks is so self-evident he’s stunned I’m even asking.
He is a author.
MANY MONTHS LATER, after I repeat the story to Lerner’s outdated colleague Scott Van Pelt, he chuckles.
“He’s missing that it’s a flattering question,” Van Pelt says. “Of course he’s a writer. He’s also a television host. Not a decent one, not a good enough one, but an excellent one. And he’s an excellent broadcaster. These are hats he wears with equal aplomb.”
Or streams all fed by the similar river. The reality is that Lerner can’t flip off his author’s mind any greater than he can flip off his dulcet baritone. It’s an inherent piece of who he’s, and meaning it’s an inherent piece of who he’s on tv.
Good writers obsess over qualities like fashion and voice, setup and payoff. Lerner has had the time to develop these qualities in spades. Over the final 26 years, he’s written greater than 1,000 essays for the Golf Channel on all the pieces from Tiger Woods’ life-threatening automotive crash to the methods through which enjoying Whistling Straits is like exploring the moon. His work as a broadcaster and TV host is inextricable from his work as an essayist, however the latter is what he’s greatest recognized for; it has outlined Lerner’s tenure together with his present employer.
These days, Lerner normally writes at the least one essay an evening for Golf Central or Live From, and relying on the information of the day he’ll have anyplace from a number of months to a couple minutes to arrange it. There is a way of polish and pleasure behind these performances, and even the all-out sprints flip up dripping together with his distinctly elegant prose.
“I think the ability to have those two gears is such a gift. One is you’re an event planner; the other is you’re a line cook,” Van Pelt says. “And the thing about Rich is, even when you’re slapping together flapjacks and an omelet for the drunk who just came into the late-night diner — it’s not just that. It’s always got a little bit more flavor, a little bit more nuance, a little more substance.”
It ought to come as no shock to be taught that Lerner’s language seldom will get returned to the kitchen. In current years, his writing voice has turn into so recognizable that it has turn into a contest amongst the Golf Channel employees to try their very own Rich-isms (a uncommon case of imitation really being the sincerest kind of flattery). Nobody can fairly seize Lerner’s reward for the metaphor — however that doesn’t cease all people round the workplace from ripping off his greatest ones, like “longshoreman’s forearms.”
“Sometimes I’ll just look at him and say, ‘That was Shakespearean,’” Chamblee says. “It’s frickin’ beautiful.”
NBC Sports
Like all good writers, Lerner is commonly the product of a razor-sharp editor. There have been many fact-checkers over the years (Hegarty is amongst the longest-tenured), however none extra essential than the one Rich calls “the boss.” Her identify is Robin Lerner — proprietor of an M.S. in linguistics — and the two have been married for greater than twenty years.
“She looks at every one of my pieces,” Lerner says with a wry grin. “She’s extremely literate. Sometimes she’ll say to me I will have maybe overwritten or written sideways on a thought. She’ll say ‘what are you trying to say?’ Which is her way of saying ‘I don’t understand.’ And I’ll get a little pissed, and then some time will go by and I’ll think to myself, ‘You know what? She’s got a point.’”
Robin’s enhancing has saved many an essay from the brink, he admits now. He stammers a bit — a rarity — after I ask what she means to him.
“He loves her to death,” Hegarty says extra succinctly.
Every individual interviewed for this story touched on some model of the similar theme: There’s one thing about Rich’s relationship with Robin that speaks to his relationship with work. There’s effort and there’s vulnerability. And the floor beneath the two is agency sufficient to face up to way more than trustworthy suggestions. That’s a testomony to their relationship and it’s a testomony to Rich’s dedication to the craft. His willingness to humble himself earlier than even the closest individuals in life displays his burning want to do one thing price remembering.
“I think all writers have a battle with that uncertainty. You know, that question of: Is this great?” Van Pelt mentioned. “I think Rich is right to aspire to be that. And I hope he takes very certain steps these days.”
It is difficult to search out confidence as a author — and it requires confidence to talk your writing to a tv viewers. But these round Lerner say his secret is that there is no such thing as a secret; he sees that there’s work to be accomplished and he’s good as a result of he chooses to do it each day, even when no one’s watching. He chooses to present a bit of himself to the world, acknowledging that the world might discover it foolish or unworthy, as a result of it’s higher to be foolish and unworthy than nothing in any respect. Hemingway mentioned that writing is sitting down at a typewriter and bleeding. Lerner’s colleagues relish the alternative to look at him just do that.
“Let’s talk about commercial breaks for a second,” Chamblee says. “You or I would say, ‘we’ll be right back from the beautiful shores of Torrey Pines.’ Well, that works. But this is where Rich is different.”
Brandel’s pitch rises to match the ardour of his topic.
“Rich will figure out exactly what the shore is called, what the dirt is called, when the break is coming in, and what the birds are singing. He’ll figure out when the hang glider was invented. And he’ll figure out some turn of phrase that nobody’s ever heard before to weave that all together — punching the keys like Tyson punching the bag…”
He pauses as he says that final half, as if to underscore the depth of his admiration.
“What kind of person cares that much about a break? Seriously … tell me.”
Well, isn’t it apparent?
You can attain the author at james.colgan@golf.com. To obtain golf media exclusives earlier than they attain the relaxation of the net, subscribe to the Hot Mic Newsletter beneath.
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