MORGANTOWN – There will be a significant West Virginia University presence at this year’s U.S. Open taking place at Oakmont Country Club  just outside of Pittsburgh on June 12-15.

And, no, it’s not just because there will be lots of Flying WV logos in the gallery.

WVU School of Journalism and School of Physical Education graduate Joe Martin is now the lead golf director for NBC Sports, and he is turning West Virginia University’s athletics video production unit into one of the network’s farm teams.

No less than six former WVU video production crew members are working this year’s U.S. Open in some capacity. Eva Buchman will be the main camera operator on hole six, and she will be relieved by Seth Halverson. 

Seth is also providing camera relief on holes four and five.

Alex Kraus will be seven stories high in a crane as its relief camera operator, while Adam Treadway, Alex Johnson and Chris Jones will be working the championship in various camera roles.

Additionally, on-site at Oakmont will be NBC Sports’ vice president of golf operations, Allison McAllister, a former Mountaineer swimming and diving performer who has been with the network since 2017.

Gary Quinn, NBC Sports vice president of programming and general manager, is another WVU alum who works on the business side, and he is the person responsible for getting Martin involved with NBC Sports nearly 30 years ago.

Back then, the WVU sport management program, overseen by Dr. Bill Alsop and Dr. Dallas Branch, had an internship component to its master’s curriculum. Students were required to get practical, on-the-job work experience in lieu of a master’s thesis. Their reasoning for this was simple: it was much better for the program to have people out in the workforce hiring WVU sport management graduates than it was for them having to read a bunch of mediocre theses, most of which would never see the light of day!

Martin worked two years as Mike Parson’s graduate assistant for the Mountaineer Sports Network and one of his class projects was creating the basketball show Mountaineer Jammin’ that became popular with WVU basketball fans in the late 1990s.

Martin said he will arrive in Pittsburgh for this year’s U.S. Open on Saturday and will spend four days on site preparing for the broadcast.

“When you look at our production memo for the U.S. Open, including vice presidents, we end up with about 500 people on site,” he noted.

Martin will not need to apply any sunscreen because nearly all his time will be spent inside the television compound.

“I tell people all the time, if I’m out on the course after Wednesday then something is probably wrong,” he laughed. “I do all my work on the course before Wednesday, and then the day before we air, my entire day is spent in the TV compound in the control room making sure everything is correct in there. I’m giving final assignments to the camera people.”

Martin admits a considerable amount of preparation goes into a U.S. Open telecast.

“We call the USGA every two weeks just to touch base to address the little things that can come up,” he said. “Say somebody in the fourth to last group started three strokes behind but has the round of their life and shoots the Johnny Miller 63 to jump into the lead at the U.S. Open. Well, where is that person to make sure we have a camera on them?

“We have to make sure we have all basis covered,” Martin observed.

Martin now possesses eight Emmy Awards for his television work in golf and the Olympics, while his wife, Holly McClure, has three more for her freelancing efforts with the network. Thanks to Tiger Woods, they both won an Emmy for their coverage of the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.

The couple make Brooklyn, New York, their year-round residence and Martin has his hands full keeping up with his two children from a prior marriage. His son, Wil, is a lighting designer for a theater company in Cooperstown, New York, while his daughter, Joely, is a junior to be at Western Carolina University where she is the head drum major for the Pride of the Mountains Marching Band.

Through the years, Martin has remained connected with his alma mater. He was inducted into the CPASS Hall of Fame in 2021 and has continued his long relationship with WVU’s television production unit, led by Scott Bartlett and Chris Ostien.

Ostien recently asked Martin to come back and speak to one of his classes and that’s where WVU’s pipeline to NBC Sports was established.

“I asked (Ostien), ‘Hey, do you have any people to recommend for camera because we are at a point where a lot of our long-time camera operators at NBC are retiring and we need to have a changeover?'” Martin recalled. “He recommended Eva Buchman, who came to us as a utility worker.”