It's all in the presentation. On a golf telecast they might be following 10 different players on different holes. Pretty much as soon as one guy hits his shot, they switch to another guy. Or if somebody who's not in contention gets a hole-in-one they'll show that. The coverage is specifically designed not to have a lot of dead time. Although they do have these boring segments where talking heads analyze what's going on.
As with most sports, I make extensive use of my DVR.