The BBC’s rapidly dwindling list of sporting events is hardly breaking news. The corporation has been chased away not only by Sky Sports and latterly BT Sport but, prior to that, Channel 4 and ITV, who helped themselves to some of Auntie’s heirlooms.

It’s only a little over a month ago that the BBC had to plea-bargain with ITV for monetary assistance to fend off Sky’s bid to buy the rights to the Six Nations Championship. The quid quo pro for ITV is that they will get to screen a few of the games in the tournament.

In 2017, BBC will be replaced by Sky Sports as the British Open’s live broadcast partner. For those who enjoyed the ad-free coverage with a colourful cast of odds and sods behind the microphone, the prospect of Sky’s oily soundtrack, the love bombing of the game’s marquee names, may induce queasiness.

But there are others who will view Sky’s takeover as a timely intervention and in support may point to the BBC’s coverage of the Women’s British Open at Turnberry.

Backboned

For Zach Johnson's triumph at St Andrews, BBC assembled a largely distinguished commentating cadre, backboned by the 84-year-old doyen Peter Alliss, Andrew Cotter and Ken Brown, with the excellent Maureen Madill acting as the primary on-course reporter.

The aforementioned cast was relocated to Turnberry but interestingly didn’t directly reprise previous roles in the case of Madill and Brown.

It was Brown who was asked to primarily traipse the fairways, while Madill was afforded one of the primary commentating roles.

The reason was rather simple. Madill’s knowledge of the women’s game and its constituents was voluminous in detail and anecdote in stark contrast to that of Alliss.

Left-field observations

His knowledge of the men’s game, past and present, allows him to pepper his commentary with left-field observations, short stories, tall tales and the occasional verbal indiscretion.

He is at ease in that environment but that certainly wasn’t the case at Turnberry, where the only time he sounded comfortable was when tossed the odd viewer’s email to reminisce.

Listening to Alliss commentate called to mind the suggestion that it resembled watching an episode of Catchphrase, a popular game show where the contestants are invited to “say what you see”.

He was relegated to providing captions for the television pictures: “that’s a difficult lie, that putt’s come up short, the ball appears to be heading for the bunker” and so on.

It was one-dimensional because the players were largely unfamiliar to him; bone with no flesh.

It explained why he was accompanied by Madill or Cotter at all times. Cotter is an excellent broadcaster with a sharp, dry sense of humour; mellifluous in tone, he strikes a nice balance between fact and whimsy. He is diligent in terms of his homework and that was obvious from the backstory he was able to provide to individual golfers.

Brown offered an engaging presence as an on-course commentator, providing context to the player’s decision-making process; but it was difficult to escape the notion that if it had just been Alliss and Brown in the commentary box, the viewer would have had to make do with golf commentary by Wikipedia.

Dinosaur

Alliss also managed to draw the ire of some when he suggested that the American golfer, Christina Kim, was "built for comfort not for speed" but before you could say "misogynist dinosaur" and several did, the lady in question took to his defence on Twitter stating: "Let the man be. I love being squishy; he can say what he wants if that makes him happy."

Alliss polarises opinion like pink Opal Fruits but last weekend it wasn’t about what he said but what he didn’t that carried the clearer message.