Jordan Spieth didn’t win the BMW Championship this weekend. In fact, he finished tied for 19th, with a three-over par third round 74 on Saturday derailing what had been a very promising start to the penultimate event of the PGA Tour season.

A big part of that Saturday meltdown occurred when Spieth put a bunker shot in the water on the fifth hole. This isn’t unusual for Spieth; since his legendary 2015 run when he was pretty clearly the top player in the world, he’s struggled with consistency on a nearly shot-to-shot basis. One thing Spieth hasn’t struggled with, though, is confidence in his ability to pull things off that most players might not even consider trying.

Or, in some cases, that Spieth’s own caddie might not want him to consider trying. Spieth’s dialogue with caddie Michael Greller was captured in nearly its entirety, with the broadcast booth wisely laying out as the conversation unfolded.

Spieth had been coming off of two straight birdies before that miscue, and recovered for another birdie on the sixth hole. From there, though, he made three consecutive birdies to finish out his opening nine and never really got back into contention.

But this isn’t really about the numbers on the scorecard for Spieth. (Awful Announcing isn’t pivoting to days-old golf gamer stories.) This is about how those two minutes managed to be some of the most incredible sports television of the weekend. It takes a special circumstance for golf to qualify for that award, but we got everything necessary in this stretch.

First, and most importantly, the broadcast removed as much of the filter as possible between viewer and action. That’s rare in golf broadcasting, but this is essentially the same as getting a live look at a quarterback and head coach discussing a key fourth-down playcall, or being piped into a key mound conference during a pennant race. That’s not something we ever really get, and it’s also the exact sort of thing golf should be angling for, despite some key players being resistant to live mics as the norm.

What makes golf a great sport for this is that there’s no strategy being given away that could possibly help any other player. Even after the fact, there’s nothing about this conversation that could possibly give any of Spieth’s opponents an upper hand.

Obviously not every player-caddie conversation is going to be this dynamic, nor have such a humorous conclusion. (After all of that, the sound the ball makes hitting the water is absolutely perfect.)

It was a perfect storm, then, of player, stage, situation, and outcome, and viewers couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Except, perhaps, for more player-caddie conversations going forward. They’re way more interesting than anything a booth is going to add in that moment.

About Jay Rigdon

Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.