For the first time since 1959, CBS will have a new coordinating producer for its Masters Tournament telecast.

That doesn't mean Lance Barrow, successor to golf pioneer Frank Chirkinian, is a new kid on the block.

In fact, if you look at his resume, or just talk to him about the broadcast, it's clear that he has been preparing for this week for a long time.

Mr. Barrow was interviewed five weeks ago in Miami, as he prepared to broadcast the Doral-Ryder Open. But when asked about the Masters, it may as well have been the day before the tournament.

In explaining the few tweaks he is making to this year's telecast, he effortlessly ran through a mental map of the course and a catalog of shots CBS has missed over the years.

Mr. Barrow has added cameras on the 10th, 11th, and 16th holes. At the 16th hole a few years ago, he said, Seve Ballesteros was in a bunker and the camera could only show him from the waist up. This new camera would have showed him in full. It will also show the angle of putts with the gallery in the background. The 10th-hole camera will show tee shots better and give a ``real pretty'' look up the fairway to the green, he said.

A new 11th-hole treetop camera would have caught Larry Mize's famous 1987 chip-in and celebration straight on and will also capture ``one of the great shots in golf,'' the golfers walking up the 12th tee as people stand and applaud.

Clearly, Mr. Barrow has thought this through.

``I can tell you almost every shot we're going to be able to get,'' he said.

Began with a bluff

Mr. Barrow, 42, grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and played football and baseball at Abilene Christian University. If there's someone from the world of television sports he reminds you of, at least in demeanor, it's football announcer John Madden. Somehow, it's easier to picture him in a stadium cheering a hard tackle than standing by the green applauding a handsome par. But Mr. Barrow obviously loves golf, and is a 12-handicap player, with memberships at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth and Royal Troon in Scotland.

It's not entirely surprising to hear that his television career began with an aggressive, do-whatever-it-takes bluff.

Mr. Barrow, 19, was a caddy at the Colonial tournament, and his player, Randy Wolf, missed the cut. Mr. Barrow had read newspaper articles about the television producer and was interested, so he went to the ABC trucks to look for work.

An ABC person asked him if he had worked television before, and he said yes. He asked if Mr. Barrow could do graphics, and he said yes. In reality he had no idea what he was doing, but he was hired. At the end of the week, they told him that he had done a good job and that if he ever needed work he should give them a call. His television career had begun.

Waited in the wings

Mr. Barrow earned his current job on a somewhat sturdier foundation than his first.

He joined CBS part time in 1975, before graduating from college, and since then has worked in some capacity the gamut of major sporting events, including Super Bowls, the Olympics, the NCAA Final Four and the U.S. Open Tennis Championship.

Most important, he worked for years alongside Mr. Chirkinian, the man he is succeeding. The part-time Augusta resident is credited with having virtually invented the way golf is televised. His innovations were as basic as listing players' scores against par and putting microphones in the holes. Mr. Chirkinian left the telecast in 1996, becoming special consultant and senior executive for CBS golf.

Mr. Barrow compares working with Mr. Chirkinian to learning the telephone from Alexander Graham Bell.

``I always kid him that he was the guy who said, `What we ought to do is count each stroke,''' Mr. Barrow said.

Mr. Chirkinian's manner had earned him the nickname ``The Ayatollah,'' and Mr. Barrow said that with Mr. Chirkinian, ``he's telling you more than he's teaching you.'' But Mr. Barrow said he always appreciated what Mr. Chirkinian was saying and said his manner was not unlike that of his father.

In recent years the Golf Channel and Fox Sports offered Mr. Barrow jobs, but he elected to wait for the chance to succeed Mr. Chirkinian.

Jim Nantz, CBS play-by-play announcer, said people had understood for about two years that Mr. Barrow would fill Mr. Chirkinian's position. Mr. Barrow produced eight tournaments in 1995 and 16 tournaments in 1996.

``When Frank was missing events, Lance was the guy taking his place,'' Mr. Nantz said. ``It was quite clear he would be the perfect choice, the perfect candidate.''

As producer, Mr. Barrow chooses what to show on television and gives direction to the announcers.

``We would not have wanted someone to come in here from the outside, to parachute in, and completely upset and change the way we do it,'' Mr. Nantz said.

Knowing the players

Golf, Mr. Barrow said, is the hardest sport to televise. There are no timeouts, no halftime, no boundaries, no numbers on the players and more than one ball in play at a time. When you go to a commercial, players keep playing. If you get behind or show the wrong player, and have to show replays of shots, trying to catch up is like crawling out of quicksand.

That's why someone in his position needs very detailed knowledge of the players and their habits.

``When I first came out here, people said Frank Chirkinian could tell a golfer 300 yards away by the way he walked, by the way he sets up,'' Mr. Barrow said.

Knowing how long a player stands over the ball before he hits is key to deciding how to cut between shots.

Helping Mr. Barrow with his knowledge of the players is his work as a producer of features on the tour's upcoming players. He and Mr. Nantz profiled about 90 ``new breed'' golfers, many of whom are now tour superstars. His career has advanced on a course parallel to theirs.

His friends include players Davis Love III, Duffy Waldorf and Nick Price, and he said tour players aren't reluctant to complain to him when they think they aren't on television enough.

Curtis Strange, who divides his time between playing tournaments and providing commentary for ABC, said Mr. Barrow would be more of a ``player's producer.''

``He's out. He enjoys the players. He likes to go to dinner with a lot of players,'' Mr. Strange said. ``We haven't seen that in the past with producers, any of them, really.''

One of Mr. Barrow's favorite stories is about the time his family and Davis Love III's family got together for dinner. Mr. Barrow found himself alone with Mr. Love's mother, and she cornered him with the complaint he hears the most, that CBS doesn't show enough scores.

``I said, `Mrs. Love, if you're not on the front page of the leader board, who cares?'''

In fact, he shows the scores of non-contending players more often than past producers, putting them on the bottom of the screen. He has added more cameras. His analysts make more use the telestrator, a device with which they can draw on screen, to diagram a player's swing or show where a shot needs to go.

Once the show is going, Mr. Barrow speaks relatively little to his announcers, he said.

``We spend a lot of time, our announcers and I, together,'' Mr. Barrow said. ``If we talk about something Friday afternoon and something comes up on Sunday, then I will say, `Remember we said this.' But I'm not going to do play-by-play with those guys.''

An easy job?

If anything, Mr. Barrow's deep familiarity with the Augusta National Golf Club and the ways this telecast differs from other tour events should make his job this week easier than it is at some other tournaments. Commercial breaks are one minute instead of the usual two, and they are fewer in number than on other tournaments. CBS doesn't show any of its usual sponsored features. It's less likely that Mr. Barrow will miss showing a shot live because he has to show something else.

Despite his new twists, he said, people should expect to see what they always see.

``We're basically going to do what we've always done,'' he said. ``Don't let us get in the way of golf.''