There are potential excuses. ESPN — there isn't anything left of ABC Sports — no longer covers much golf. So unlike TV golf regulars CBS and NBC, it had to pull together a team that included on-air veterans who have worked together, but not regularly anymore, to cover Tom Watson coming within a final-hole yip of a historic win. (Often overlooked in how historic a Watson win would have been: He would have been the first man to win a major he'd been scheduled to call on TV — he was slated to be a weekend Open analyst on ABC.)

There's also the issue of how to incorporate the BBC's world TV feed of the Open, supplemented by ESPN/ABC's own efforts, into the U.S. coverage. This shouldn't be a huge deal. Integrating world feeds in U.S. TV is just part of the drill with many overseas events, such as the Olympics, and broadcasters need to figure out what they have to supplement. And yet Sunday, putts disappeared behind caddies standing behind holes — without another TV shot capturing where putts were going.

The announcers — including Mike Tirico,Paul Azinger, Curtis Strange, Andy North, Tom Weiskopf and Judy Rankin — talked plenty. Sometimes, too much. And too often, balls were called "perfect" before they stopped rolling in imperfect spots. And there were bromides like Azinger "putting is the measure of your heart."

Sometimes viewers had to wait to see exactly where balls landed. In one strange moment, a flagging Watson tried to blast his second shot out of thick grass on the third playoff hole and his ball just seemed to disappear — with neither announcers nor camera shots giving away clues to where it had gone.

To its credit, ESPN/ABC didn't go crazy hyping Watson's historic run until late in his round Sunday. And Tirico wisely warned that "we live in a day where we feel like we have to compare everything. … There's nothing that compares to this." Tirico also didn't back off when Watson missed an 18th-hole eight-foot putt for a win: "That was a zero confidence putt."

And at least ESPN/ABC didn't go overboard with you're-watching-a-major solemnity. It hyped an upcoming ABC series where "astronauts find life and love at the edge of the universe." And Tirico, noting winner Stewart Cink has more than 500,000 Twitter followers, noted Cink hadn't been feeling well and tweeted "that he felt like he had swine flu."

The coverage wasn't awful. But with moments where viewers were left waiting for basic information or listened to announcers avoid humor at all costs and too often talked about something other than what was going on, the ESPN/ABC's effort was like Watson's play itself: The TV coverage that seemed like something you remember seeing — back in 20th century.