Confessions of a sports presenter: his 'scripts' are just for show
What the TV camera does not catch, no one will know.
Which is why Mr Timothy Low sometimes wears only the top half of his suit.
The rest of the ensemble is foregone in favour of shorts and flip flops underneath the newscasters' desk, admits the resident golf presenter of Fox Sports Asia.
He says, with a laugh: "Well, it can get quite stuffy being in a suit for several hours. I'm pretty sure the other guys do it as well!"
He adds: "Not only that, I keep Hello Panda biscuits under the table for whenever I need a quick nibble too."
Mr Low, 25, is one of the youngest in the Fox Sports Asia stable of commentators, joining the team in early 2014.
The boisterous Singaporean used to be a golf professional and had trained at the Singapore Sports School.
He shares with The New Paper on Sunday secrets of what goes on behind the scenes in the studio at one-north.
Referring to the stack of papers placed in front of him when he goes on air, Mr Low says: "It's fake, it's there only to make me look intelligent."
He recalls how a producer once played a trick on him by inserting an expletive on the teleprompter.
Mr Low says: "It wasn't aired, but they recorded my reaction, of course. All I can say is that the word is too 'colourful' for television."
But thanks to his own golfing experience, he does not need a teleprompter or cue cards to tell him what to say when talking about the news.
"Just wing it," says Mr Low of his working philosophy.
TECHNIQUE
It is a technique his personal hero, former US Open winner Michael Campbell, taught him - by ripping up his cue cards just before an important interview with another sporting hero of his, Greg Norman.
"I wanted to kill Michael for doing that. But it helped me to have a conversation with Greg, who later told me it was one of his best interviews," Mr Low says, with a tinge of pride.
It is not all fun and play for sports presenters. For instance, they have to report to work in the wee hours due to time zone differences and sporting events taking place around the world.
Presenters must also be prepared for any eventuality.
Mr Low has been caught off guard on live television several times when graphics failed to appear on screen and when the touchscreen television in the studio stalled, leaving him with little to work with.
And if he gets a sudden urge to go to the toilet, Mr Low says he can only bear with it.
"Think dry thoughts. I think about Africa, Botswana, the desert," he says.
Citing Murphy's law, Mr Low believes anything that can go wrong will go wrong - especially when the cameras are live.
It happened when he was supposed to present the 2015 Open Championship. Bad weather had caused the game to be delayed for nearly four hours, but the show had to go on.
That left Mr Low and his guests having to fill airtime.
As they gradually ran out of golfing topics to discuss, it became his own talk show.
"I felt like Oprah Winfrey. I was just moments away from asking my guests their Wi-Fi password," says Mr Low.
SECRETS OF THE TRADE
1 Learn to pronounce difficult names properly. But if you find yourself stumped by a name, pronounce it confidently and people might not notice it may be incorrect.
2 Be frank to your audience and tell them who you are biased towards. It is only natural that sports presenters have their favourite teams or players.
3 While it takes time to become familiar with a sport, your job will be more enjoyable if you happen to be a fan.
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