That’s what the golf commentator said today, preceded by “When you come to the 14th” (hole.)
Couldn’t he have just said “You need a plan?”
Sure, but when you’re commentating in real time you can’t really stop and say “Now, what is the best way to say this?”
I note you edited your post. The commentator could not.
The guy’s got three hours to fill. You can’t blame him for being a little verbose.
Besides, he’s trying to make golf sound interesting. 
Actually you can, at least in golf. He was commentating on a taped hole, for goodness’ sake. And he shares duties with at least three others. He was under no pressure at all to speak without thinking.
Well, I don’t get paid to post here. It’s his job to get it right. What I edited was an additional quotation mark, which doesn’t exist in spoken English. And his entire sentence was a string of redundancies. “Pre-existing plan?” Is there any other kind? And it differs from strategy how?
I hold professionals to a bit of a higher standard than Joe Schmoe. YMMV. Let me know how that emergency appendectomy works out for you.
But if you don’t use enough words, you won’t look intelligent, cogitative, intellectual, bright, keen-witted, and/or smart.
He’s commenting in real time. And a commentator is supposed to keep talking – “dead air” is very bad practice. So occasionally one comment will get out that could have been phrased better, but it’s hardly worth getting all bothered by.
It’s not speaking without thinking; it’s speaking without the ability to edit his comments. When there’s a lot to cover (not to mention having to listen to the director talking in his hear), you don’t have the time to plan out everything, and you certainly can’t edit it.
What exactly did he get wrong, other than talking in a roundabout manner? If that’s shocking, you really should listen to human beings more often.
I didn’t recall redundancies being illegal. As a matter of fact, they’re an important part of language. If he were writing, then you could have a case, but people often say things that aren’t in the most efficient way possible. Considering how much the commentator was probably speaking during the broadcast, it’s goes beyond nitpicking to choose one sentence and start ridiculing it.
And the comment actually *is * a sign of a professional announcer. An amateur would try to correct himself on the air.
And that is a damn difficult job. 
Watching golf is probably fascinating to people who play the game. For me it rates below watching paint dry on my interest scale. YMMV.
Contrapuntal, meet Colemanballs. It’s a well known phenomenon.
My personal favorite, and no, I don’t have a cite, was when I heard a commentator say in a SEC football game a few years back.
“If they’re going to win this game, they are going to have to be leading at the end of the fourth quarter”.
You’ve taken a button and sewn a vest on it there comrade. Bothered? Shocking? Illegal? I just think it’s stupid. You’re reading way too much in to it.
Riiight. Mindless filler is the sign of a pro. Let me know when you get back out of the rabbit hole.
I don’t see where there’s much opportunity for strategy or game plans in golf, anyway. It’s not like you will be outflanked by Napoleon’s cavalry if you hit a tree.
Ahhh, target marketing!
Football -> audience: Joe Lunchbucket -> cliché: overstatement of the obvious.
Golf -> audience: Joe Numbercrunch -> cliché: overly verbose and inflated phrasing.
My favourite commentary cliche is in soccer commentary over here, when the scores are level but one team is under pressure. No matter how early this occurs in a game, the commentators will often say “they don’t want to concede a goal now”, which they may back up with some half-arsed theory about how going one goal behind at that particular point is somehow worse than it would be if it happened later in the game, which it clearly isn’t.
The exception that proves the rule would be Dennis Miller’s short lived stint on Monday Night Football.
I shit you not, he once actually once said “Those two look like Romulus and Remus running across the plains!”
Allrighty there, Denny.
I heard a basketball commentator talk about one player’s effectiveness in “shooting from the standpoint of the three-point line.”
:eek:
Swear to Og, this guy just inserted “standpoint of” into that sentence to make it sound fancy, without actually meaning anything, let alone that phrase’s actual meaning.
And of course, the team would be totally cool with giving up a goal 20 minutes later.
One other thing before I sit down and watch the Auburn Florida game. This thread wouldn’t be complete without a few yogisms (the baseball great Yogi Berra for our non-American friends)
“90% of the game is physical, the other half is mental.”
“Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded!”
“If the people don’t want to come to the ballpark, how you gonna stop them?”
“It ain’t over till it’s over.”
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“You can observe a lot by watching.”
“If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.”
“It’s Deja Vu all over again”
“It gets late early out here.”
“If Babe Ruth were alive today, he’d turn over in his grave.”
“You should always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”
One of my favorites: “Tonight, one of these two teams may lose their undefeated status.”
Yeah. Or there could be a tie…
Not having seen the clip in question, who knows, but while he was a little awkward in his wording, it actually makes sense.
If the 14th hole were a par five with a possible short cut over the water, and you’re down by two strokes, having previously though it through about the risks will help you when you get there. However, if you’re up by two then you want to protect your lead, so you’ll play it safe.
It’s possible to say that in your strategy you need two elements, an initial plan and then flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. If that what he meant, then it’s not strange at all, even if a bit clumsy.
I once listened to some “color” guy on some TV football game years ago (his name was John something) say, “where’s the guy; where’s the guy; where’s the guy” about 6 times before launching into some inane comments regarding “the guy’s” skills/hometown/record.
I realized then that 1. watching football was not something I was all that interested in doing if I had to listen to that, and 2. that nobody listens to what these guys say, but since no voice=dead air, they must fill it with nonsensical stuff. I’m sure they don’t even know what they’re saying, most of the time. I find this sad. And I haven’t noticed it in the small amount of UK soccer I have managed to watch. Perhaps it’s an idiosyncracy of American sportscasters?
To be fair to Yogi, the vast majority of the most popular Yogisms make sense. They’re generally true as long as you don’t take every word literally. They’re clear and concise, and they avoid the awkward grammar and overcorrection rife in sports broadcasting. For example:
This sounds ridiculous on its face, since “imitate” and “copy” are synonyms. But he was clearly using a more nuanced meaning of “imitate” that was closer to “duplicate” or at least “resemble”, and a meaning of “copy” that was closer to the literal meaning of, well, “imitate”. It’s like a subjunctive version of “Often imitated, never duplicated”. And I think that, without resorting to that cliched term, Rick Sutcliffe couldn’t capture the meaning of “if you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him” in a paragraph. That’s the genius of Yogi: he sounded like a monkey at a typewriter, but his one-liners, more often dropped in casual conversation than contrived for a journalist*, belied a type of abstract thinking that allowed for almost transcendent connections between otherwise trivial things.
- “90% of the game is physical, the other half is mental” is probably an exception. Though IIRC the actual quote was more like “90% of the game is physical, and it’s half mental”, which allows for overlap; it implies that most or all of the mental exertion in a baseball game would be useless without physical ability and the will to make it happen–not that you end up giving 140% effort in every game. Regardless, it sounds like a sound byte, or maybe a quick aside to someone who asked him how to be a baseball star.
I have a theory: English sportscasters are better at sounding more profound (part of which is undoubtedly their accents). They drop names and invent criteria for their own credibility. They build their broadcast partner up with anecdotes and flattery, and then remind us of their own superiority with a quick potshot that their partner takes in stride. And so it goes, back and forth, on and on. That’s the impression I get from English soccer broadcasts. Any thoughts, UK Dopers? Am I on to something here or am I a victim of selection bias?