"one example being the Golf Open when commentators needed to be near the action, but get quality audio back to the club house for transmission - but when they are used there's generally no alternative."
Not a good example - this is a voice commentary, so it doesn't exactly need to be super-duper highest possible quality, all they need is for the words to be intelligible. A mobile phone or walkie-talkie should work fine! And given that the news channels seem to think that a bad skype link is okay for interviewing people, then surely similar quality is fine for some sports commentary?