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What: “Payne Stewart . . . by Payne Stewart”

Where: ESPN, tonight, 6:30

The Payne Stewart story is going to be told a lot this week, leading up to the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. The Golf Channel devoted an hour and a half to its own biography of the 1999 U.S. Open champion Monday night. ESPN checks in with a half-hour special tonight with what it calls a “video autobiography” of Stewart, who died Oct. 25 at 42 in a bizarre mishap in which a private jet flew out of control nearly halfway across the country before crashing.

ESPN tries something different--no narration, although Mike Tirico sets the scene in segments taped at Pebble. The show consists mostly of Stewart talking about himself and his friends, plus his friends, people such as Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, talking about Stewart. In some ways it works nicely, in others it doesn’t.

There’s an axiom in television production that you presume the viewer doesn’t know anything. In one segment, Paul Azinger is shown holing out a bunker shot at the 1993 Memorial tournament. The producers assumed the viewer would know it was on the last hole for a one-stroke victory over Stewart. Most would, but not all.

There’s a follow-up segment, taped 17 months after that memorable Memorial, in which Stewart mimics Azinger’s winning antics. Funny stuff. Azinger says Stewart got even with him by stuffing bananas in his shoes. “But I never told Payne if I actually put my feet in the shoes without noticing the bananas,” Azinger says.

“Payne Stewart . . . by Payne Stewart” is part of a three-hour U.S. Open package on ESPN tonight. At 4 p.m. is a one-hour preview special, followed at 5 by an hour-and-a-half highlight show, “100 Years of U.S. Open Golf.”