Ray Romano on golf and TV

      Ray Romano was on a conference call the other day along with his instructor Hank Haney (Tiger Woods' erstwhile swing coach) and spoke on a number of topics, such as learning to play on a pitch-and-putt in Queens and then playing on the public courses in the city.

        The former fictional Newsday sports columnist also spoke about his current series,
"Men of a Certain Age" and the prospect of having golf as a theme on that cable show. He said:

        "Yes, the way we left off last year was my character, Joe, making a decision to dedicate himself to try to make it on the Champions Tour.  That’s where we’re going to explore this year.  There’s going to be more golf.  At least what we’re going to do is when the character, Joe, does swing, we’re going to not have a ball there and I’m going to know how to swing now.  I’m going to make sure I swing like Hank tells me to, so he will like a player who does have ambition of playing on the tour because we’ll just CGI the ball in there.  But we’re going to see a bunch of golf this year, yes."

        He added, maybe half-seriously, that there would be no stunt actor for the golf swing scenes. It will be Ray's swing, only they will shoot him without a ball there, which is when he swings best.
 

       More on Ray's take on golf (and sportswriters who play it) in the Long Island Golf column in Newsday Sunday, along with a piece about the private Long Island club that has opened its doors to a Scottsdale-based management company.