DEATH OF TV PRODUCER WHO MOVED US ON FROM "LEVEL 4s"

By COLIN FARQUHARSON
Colin@scottishgolfview.com
You need to be of a certain age to remember when players, from five times Open champion Peter Thomson & Co down to club members,  and TV commentators related individual scores to "4s" as in 36 to the turn would be "level 4s."
The man attributed with changing all that so that you talked about scores in relation to par died on Friday at the age of 84.
He was Frank Chirkinian, the long-time TV golf coverage producer for CBS who helped turn the Masters into one of the most watched events in sports television, has died.
Agency report:
Chirkinian died Friday at his home in North Palm Beach, Florida, after a long bout with lung cancer, his son told The Associated Press. He was surrounded by friends and family.
The television pioneer was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame just last month, during an emergency vote after it became widely known he was undergoing treatment for cancer. He will be inducted posthumously on May 9 in St. Augustine, Florida, in the lifetime achievement category.

"He squeezed every drop of life out of his 84 years," his son, Frank Chirkinian Jr., said during a phone interview. "I don't think there was anything left."

Described as street-wise and direct, Chirkinian had said recently that getting into the Hall of Fame was the apex of his career - and what a robust career it was.

He produced the first TV coverage US PGA Championship in 1958, at Llanerch Country Club near his home in Philadelphia, and two years later the first televised Winter Olympics from Squaw Valley. He also dreamed up the idea of putting cameras on blimps to cover college football games.

But it was his work in golf that stood out, and at Augusta National in particular.
He produced 38 editions of the Masters for CBS, bringing the majestic fairways and greens of Augusta to fans who could only dream of seeing them in person.
"Frank Chirkinian was a visionary in every sense of the word," US PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said. "He was an artist. The sport of golf was presented on television to generations of fans in innovative, imaginative and entertaining ways because of Frank."
Chirkinian introduced high-angle cameras and new angles, put roving reporters on the grounds, and made sure to capture the unique blend of sounds - the club hitting the ball, the ball falling into the cup - that came to define modern golf coverage. He even changed the way scores were delivered, according to par rather than by total (in relation to scoring a 4 at every hole).

He could be friendly and agreeable, but also surly and demanding - announcer Pat Summerall gave him the nickname "The Ayatollah" in the late 1970s, when the Shah of Iran was deposed and replaced by Khomeini. It was a name that Chirkinian acknowledged he enjoyed.

"He was a friend, a mentor and a father figure to me," broadcaster Jim Nantz said. "I was blessed to have his guiding hand extended to me at the age of 26. I am comforted knowing, as long as there is golf being televised anywhere in the world, Frank Chirkinian lives."

Chirkinian left his imprint on many of golf's defining moments, from the duels between Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus that defined the 1960s and '70s, to the Golden Bear's back-nine charge to win the 1986 Masters. He called Augusta National "the greatest theatre in sport."

He retired from CBS in the late 1990s, but could still be found on the golf course.

"Frank Chirkinian was a true pioneer," said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports. "There certainly would not have been a golf television business without him. And golf may never have developed into such a robust business without the way he connected the game on the course to the viewer at home. He will be sorely missed but the game is better forever because of him."
*Associated Press writer David Fischer in Miami contributed to this story.