Williams shifts from court to course

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - When you think of Gary Williams, you see a man pacing the sidelines, getting referees and yelling encouragement to (or yelling at) his Maryland Terps from the bench at the Comcast Center. In short, he is an intense competitor and successful NCAA basketball coach.

But Williams is a man of many talents and starting today and running through Sunday he will be an integral part of Comcast SportsNet’s coverage of the AT&T National hosted by Tiger Woods. Not a bad gig for the full-time coach and part-time golf analyst.

“Tee Time at the AT&T National” debuts tonight from 7-7:30 p.m., and will air each night throughout the week following SportsNite at 6:30 p.m. Comcast SportsNet’s Chick Hernandez will join Williams as they host the 30-minute live show with interviews and analysis immediately following each day’s round. “Tee Time at the AT&T National” will also feature an hour-long show on Sunday following the championship round.

Hernandez on what it is like working with Williams: “Gary and I have a good relationship, he is fun to talk golf with and he loves to play. As a matter of fact he belongs to Congressional and knows the course very, very well. This will be the third time that Gary and I have worked on a golf tournament with him being an analyst and he really does his homework and does a great job. Having Gary has a wonderful side benefit to us because so many players are college basketball fans. The players want to come on the air with us and talk to him about college basketball and he gets to talk golf with the top pros — how good is that?”

Host Tiger Woods will be on be on the program Tuesday with Gary and Chick to layout all the details of his charity. Also Jill Sorenson will be the reporter on site all week beginning with today’s practice rounds.

D.C.-based XM radio will offer fans portable XM satellite radios for the day to the first 1,000 spectators at no charge, so they can listen to the tournament. XM will have complimentary trial booths at the two designated main entrances at the Congressional Country Club. XM is the exclusive home to PGA radio and covers all the stops on the tour.

“We have exclusive coverage on XM channel 146 every week, in cooperation with PGA Radio,” said XM spokesman David Butler. “We are the home for golf fans and we could not be more excited about working with Tiger to give fans a change to listen to action while they walk the course.”

On the TV side, the Golf Channel will have special programming all week with hole by hole coverage starting at 4 p.m. Thursday and Friday. The weekend coverage will be on CBS Saturday and Sunday from 3-6 p.m.

Around the airwaves

Hokie Nation: ESPN will kickoff its “College GameDay” season from Blacksburg, Va., when Virginia Tech hosts East Carolina on Saturday, Sept. 10. The pregame broadcast will begin at 10 a.m. and the noon game-start time on ESPN will feature Mike Tirico on play-by-play and analysts Todd Blackledge and Bill Curry. This will be the first football game on campus since April’s massacre, the deadliest in U.S. history, when a student killed 32 people and wounded another 25 before committing suicide.

Ripken ready to talk baseball again: Cal Ripken Jr. made his return to baseball at 4 p.m. Sunday when he joined Ernie Johnson Jr. and Tony Gwynn on the Major League Baseball All-Star Selection Show on TBS.

» TBS and TNT will be the home to the National League Divisional Series, American League Divisional Series and the National League Championship Series — all in HD.

Re-Upping with the NBA: Turner Sports along with ESPN/ABC have renewed their contracts with the NBA. Commissioner David Stern stated how pleased he was with the league’s relationship with his TV partners. The new deal will start next season and run through 2016.

Nine is fine: 9 News Now sports are making a real run at NBC 4’s dominance at 11 p.m. According to a recent trend the Arbitron ratings for 11 p.m., WUSA 9’s numbers go up from 11:15-11:30 p.m. to a 4.5 while NBC 4 drops to a 4.4. This means that people are tuning in to watch the sports on WUSA 9 and then at 11:35 p.m., NBC 4 re-captures the numbers when “The Tonight Show” comes on.

The ratings movement shows that WUSA 9, with its early reporting on the LaVar Arrington motorcycle accident and Christian Guzman’s season-ending surgery seem to be paying off in the post George Michael-era in Washington.

See ya next year: So long to Tony Kornheiser and his entertaining troupe of characters on WTWP radio 105.7 FM/1500 AM. We will miss his smart and funny morning show until he returns from his duties on Monday Night Football. We will miss Mr. Tony’s show with Nigel and the gang — see ya in February.

Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this! on www.examiner.com.

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