Watching Big Break as a Fan

• By Big Break Producer
• Dec 5, 2012 10:44 AM ET

It’s always fun for me to sit down in the comfort of my own living room and watch the episodes of Big Break as a fan. I’ve spent weeks and weeks stressing over the minute details of some of these shows so it has become a sense of relief when it finally airs. As I reflect on the days of when we were shooting the series and what I was doing at this point in the shoot, I remember being excited and exhausted. Shooting a Big Break is a very physically and mentally demanding task on everyone involved, so I was mostly exhausted. But, I remember the excitement at the beginning of this particular episode’s day because I knew that no matter what happened, we were going to have a great finale. As a producer I strive to make sure the challenges are fair but entertaining, the players are able to hit great golf shots while doing it in an entertaining way, and of course make sure we don’t miss anything. At this point in the season, I can honestly say mission accomplished.

And for the lucky few of you who are reading this incredibly stimulating blog, I am going to let you in on a little secret... You haven’t seen anything yet. This is the 13th Big Break season I have had the privilege of being a part of and watching the next two episodes unfold as it was happening was truly spectacular.
Oh, and here are some things that you couldn’t have possibly known about this week’s show unless you were there, so here you go:

 - The Tic-Tac-Toe challenge is the hardest challenge on Big Break to find an actual location for. It needs to happen on a short sharply sloped fairway so all the cameras have a view of all the nets.

 - The Tic-Tac-Toe nets themselves are different heights. The front row has 2 ft back legs, the middle row has 3 ft legs, and the back row is 4 ft.  

 - Did you notice during the breakfast when Rick is the first person to call “not it” on being the one who would be eliminated that day? So I guess that clinically rules out the “not it” method as an accurate measure...

 - Have you been watching the Last Break competitions on GolfChannel.com? We actually shot the final match immediately after the Rick/Isaac elimination challenge but we had to keep everyone sequestered from everyone else. The eliminated contestants were not allowed to see what was happening in the elimination challenge and we had to whisk away the active contestants as soon at the elimination was over so they didn’t know who was still in the Last Break Challenge.

Thanks for watching.

Chris Graham