The November edition of Golf Digest has Ron Sirak’s terrific breakdown of the stunning move of the U.S. Open going from NBC to Fox Sports, beginning in 2015.

The art features a Fox choking a peacock, which pretty much says it all.

Sirak writes about USGA president Glen Nager’s desire:

He is also a man hellbent on reinventing the USGA to make it what he sees as more relevant. NBC/Golf Channel executives who met with him that day at Seminole heard evidence of that.

“I told them that if you went back to the ’70s and looked at TV ratings and other indicia of what makes a championship great, the U.S. Open was considered the premier major championship in golf,” Nager says. “And that if we looked at indicia today, the Masters is considered the No. 1 major in golf. I said I wanted to work with a media partner that had a proposal to elevate the U.S. Open and the other USGA championships and the USGA as a governance organization.” (The weekend rating of the 1973 U.S. Open beat the Masters, 9.0 to 8.4. The next year, the Masters edged ahead and began widening the gap after that.)

Now don’t go blaming NBC here. The Masters and Augusta National have achieved a certain mystique. Also, keep in mind when the events are played; Masters in early spring when the weather still is cold in most of the country, keeping people inside; U.S. Open in mid-June when people are outside and not tied to the TV. That accounts for a significant difference in the ratings.

Sirak writes about NBC bringing in Arnie:

And then the door opened, and in walked Arnold Palmer, one of the founders of Golf Channel and a longtime USGA spokesman. Palmer gave an impassioned appeal that he believed it was in the best interest of the game to keep the package with NBC/GC. One of the lawyers from Proskauer asked for Palmer’s autograph.

Arnie should have sealed the deal, right? Nope.

Sirak writes about NBC receiving the news.

Then shortly after 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 7, NBC’s Lazarus got a phone call from Nager breaking the bad news. FOX, which had never televised golf in the United States—though Sky Sports, also owned by News Corporation, does golf overseas—had the exclusive rights to the U.S. Open and the rest of the USGA properties for 12 years beginning in 2015. “The board made its decision on Wednesday morning, and our president informed NBC sometime Wednesday,” Hirshland confirmed.

“Deals like this don’t happen this quickly,” says one former USGA staffer.

“Only four or five people knew what our offer was,” says an NBC official. “When you’re a longtime incumbent, you get some sort of hometown prerogative. Would we have matched? I don’t know. They chose not to give us the opportunity. FOX ended at $93 [million a year], NBC just north of $80 [million].”

“With the benefit of hindsight, we’re not sure the process was handled in the way that it was presented to us,” says NBC spokesman Greg Hughes.

NBC was never given a chance to top the FOX offer, something Nager defends.

“I told John Skipper at ESPN, I told Brian Roberts and Mark Lazarus at NBC/Comcast, and we told Randy Freer at FOX they had a 5 p.m. Monday deadline for making their last, best and final offer,” Nager says. “I had given my word that I wouldn’t [divulge bids]. They needed to value these things according to what they thought was the appropriate thing to do and be comfortable with their bid.”

NBC golf producer Tommy Roy tells Fox where to go.

The sentence in the USGA release that annoyed NBC and ESPN was this one: “The game is evolving and requires bold and unique approaches on many levels, and FOX shares our vision to seek fresh thinking and innovative ideas to deliver championship golf.” Mike McQuade, who produces golf for ESPN, and NBC’s Roy privately bristled at what they perceived as a knock on their ingenuity.

“We were disappointed that the USGA chose to disparage our production and the production of every media company [CBS, ESPN, Turner, Golf Channel, NBC] that covers golf instead of just being candid in choosing money over mission,” says NBC’s Lazarus.

Barely more than two hours after that press release about bold new directions went out, a former NBC executive now at FOX, David Neal, called Roy to talk about jumping to FOX. A close friend says Roy viewed the wording of the press release as “reprehensible” and told Neal thanks, but no thanks.

Now the upcoming stories will be on how Fox creates a golf production team from scratch. Everyone will be watching.