Grading The Golf News Sites Week: Television Sites

Essentially this means CBSSports.com, ESPN.com and GolfChannel.com and each can be summed up pretty succinctly: great columnists, not many other reasons to visit.

Credit GolfChannel.com for really amping up the number of video clips from Golf Central and other shows now available online for viewing. CBSSports.com is a disaster on this front, with some sort of strange PGA Tour/CBS rights feud that allows them to post tournament recaps by Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo on YouTube--minus highlights of the play! (Here's a hilarious example.) That would seem to be the most vital component for websites tied to television networks, no?

ESPN.com has cornered the market on video, to the point that it annoyingly starts playing when you hit the golf page. That's a problem if you are reading their site at the office with the sound up. Especially if they call Andy North to weigh in with his thoughts. We can't have people napping on the job!

Each site has streamlined their looks but both have lousy archives, saved by slowly improving search engines.

Still, I only visit these sites to see what Steve Elling has to say at CBS, what Bob Harig and Jason Sobel or sometimes contributor Eric Adelson are writing for ESPN, and what Rich Lerner, Brian Hewitt, Mercer Baggs and now Rex Hoggard have to say for TGC. How about you?