Golf's Commentator Conundrum...

plus Tiger and Nike split

Author

Sean Melia
January 12, 2024

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Golf's Commentator Conundrum

In December, NBC lead golf analyst Paul Azinger was put out to pasture. His final showing at the Ryder Cup was rather embarrassing. He wouldn’t stop harping about "click bait” on social media in regards to Patrick Cantlay’s “hatgate” story during Saturday’s matches. Overall, he seemed unprepared and out of touch.

Last year, Nick Faldo signed off from his lead analyst role at CBS. He was replaced by Masters champion Trevor Immelman. That transition has been smooth, and Immelman has been superb.

However, Paul Azinger has no replacement yet. It seems a few folks will rotate through the lead chair as NBC tries to figure out what direction to go. It’s unclear if these are invitations are also an audition or just a rotating door of characters who might be interesting for a couple of weeks.

The position of golf analyst is different than other sports analyst jobs because professional golfers can make an earning well into their 50s with the lure of the PGA Tour Champions. Working in the booth just isn’t that enticing.

Greg Olsen, a 38-year-old retired NFL tight end, called the Super Bowl last year. Olsen never won a Super Bowl; he was a very good player but played in the shadow of Rob Gronkowski and Travis Kelce. However, he’s proven to be an outstanding color analyst. He had the chance to get reps week after week on Fox, starting in the darkness of low-level NFL games and working slowly upwards to earn status as Fox’s “A team.” That position was solidified when Troy Aikman and Joe Buck headed to ESPN for Monday Night Football.

Tony Romo, the top CBS color guy, experienced the same kind of rise, but his star shined faster and brighter than Olsen, probably because he was the QB of the Dallas Cowboys. Romo earned a reputation as an under-achiever on the field, which is ironic given his path from Eastern Illinois to QB1 in Dallas. Romo went 2-4 as a starter in the playoffs, and his most famous (infamous?) play might have been bungling a field goal snap in a playoff game.

(The clip of the play is wild… Al Michaels, John Madden, Mike Holmgren, and Bill Parcels are all involved in this moment.)

So what do Olsen and Romo have to do with golf analysts?

Fox and CBS didn’t care all that much that those two guys never won a Super Bowl. Yet, in the world of golf, a major has always been an unofficial requisite for the job on NBC or CBS. It’s not a rule, but it’s a thread that connects lead golf analysts through the years.

Additionally, a golfer who is the same age as Greg Olsen should be competing on the course, not talking about it in a booth. The public viewer might view those players as a failure, not an expert or master of their craft.

Smylie Kaufman has been calling golf for 18 months now. He’s 32. He won the 2015 Shriners and was part of the “in crowd” on the PGA Tour. He and his buddies - Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, and Rickie Fowler - lit social media aflame in 2016 while documenting their spring break (#SB2k16). The guys filmed themselves having, frankly, an incredible time on an adult spring break as they drank and played golf, shirtless and shoeless, in Mexico. Looked like an absolute blast.

It didn’t take long for golf to bite back and steal Kaufman’s soul. He started missing cuts and the fame he garnered from his friendships with the young stars began to weigh heavily on him. Expectations grew, and he couldn’t meet them. Now he’s an on-course analyst, following a group during their round and giving us valuable insight.

Kaufman is very good for someone who took on the job in 2022 without thinking he’d be doing it full-time by the time 2024 rolled around. His game was in shambles, and the new job gave him the ability to be around golf and feel that competitive electricity.

Last week, Kevin Kisner was in the NBC booth. He has four PGA wins (including a WGC Match Play) and two President’s Cup appearances, add in a wealth of admirers because of his appearances on Barstool’s Foreplay podcast, and Kisner seemed like a good fit for the job in the short-term. However, he’s 39 and still competing on the PGA Tour; in fact, he’s in the Sony Open field this week (He is in 135th place after shooting 75 on Thursday).

Overall, Kisner was pretty good on TV, considering he had never done it before and had very little training. He came across as nervous but settled in and shared some great nuggets about his contemporaries who he competes against 20-25 times a year.

Kisner’s story on Smylie Kaufman’s podcast about how he got roped into the job is something else. They called him on the Monday after Thanksgiving and asked him what events he wasn’t playing in because they wanted him, or anyone, to hop in the booth as an analyst. The first five minutes of the video below is worth a watch.

The issue still stands though. NBC has two of the major championships on its network, and a lead analyst is necessary for those potentially historic calls.

It would make sense to ignore the major winning requirement and just find the best person for the job. After all, Tiger Woods lapped up a lot of majors in the 2000s, which is the decade NBC would be looking for an analyst. The pool to choose from is small.

Imagine if Phil Mickelson, as a 40-year-old, called it quits and headed to the booth. While he’s a know-it-all, he probably would have been very good with some experience and practice. He might have also decided to start his own network with someone else’s money and “disrupt” the entire televised sporting landscape. We’ll never know…

It’s too late for Phil now, I think. And if NBC wants to pull in younger viewers, a guy in his 50s, who played most of his best golf in the 1990s and 2000s, isn’t going to be the answer. Although, I’m not sure what personality is the answer for the Gen Z audience. It might be a YouTube star who never played professional golf at all.

This is the conundrum that golf faces. “Young” analysts can appear as failures who couldn’t play professionally into their 40s. The older analyst isn’t going to attract the younger audience.

There have been people floating the idea that maybe a rotating cast of characters would be interesting and keep things fresh. It’s hard to disagree with that, but when the 72nd hole of the U.S. Open at Pinehurst rolls around this June, NBC is going to want to toss it to someone who has some reps and practice behind the mic. That, to me, feels more important than having won a major championship a decade or more ago.

Picture of the week: Edinburgh Castle

News and Notes

  • Rory McIlroy, who is doing a lot of talking these days, suggested a World Tour might be the best solution for professional golf. It’s tough to disagree with the idea of the best players traveling the world playing in various countries for national championships. Australia, South Africa, England, Ireland, Japan. It would feel like F1. The beauty of F1 is that there are just 20 seats available. The EPL is incredible because only 20 teams a year get the honor of playing in the league and teams can lose their spot through relegation. The reason an NFL quarterback is so revered is there are just 32 starting spots available. If golf leaned into this, while finding opportunities for golfers that don’t make the grade (there is an F2, after all), it would be incredible.

  • Tiger and Nike split… It was a week of retirements and separations. Nick Saban retired at Alabama, while Bill Belichick and the Pats are parting ways, too. Tiger Woods made it official that he’d no longer be wearing Nike. No one knows what he’ll be wearing instead. He’s been playing Taylor Made clubs for a while, and TM might be making some original apparel to stand out from its partnership with Adidas. Or maybe Tiger decides to make his own brand. Kyle Porter shared this interesting story about Roger Federer who made $600 million when he left Nike… 

  • Speaking of golf fashion… Jason Day also parted ways with Nike for Malbon, and this outfit caused quite a stir.

When I’m not golfing…

I’m gambling….(Every week, because it's now legal in Mass. I'm going to make five NFL picks and keep track of them here.)

  • Last Week: No picks.

    • Cleveland (-2) over Houston

    • Kansas City (-4.5) over Miami

    • Buffalo (-9.5) over Pittsburgh

    • Dallas (-7) over Green Bay

    • LA Rams (+3) over Detriot

    • Philly (-3) over Tampa Bay

I’m reading…

  • Spotify now offers 20 hours of audiobooks with their subscription. I started listening to Chuck Klostermann’s The Nineties. I’m enjoying it quite a bit. It’s not nostalgic, as he makes the effort to just present the moments that shaped the 90s. The first chapter is a great dive into generations, mainly Generation X.

  • This NYTimes article about January being the best month is interesting. In some cases, January stinks (especially as a golfer), but there is something lovely about the slowness of the month after the busyness of holidays.

I’m listening to…

  • Kyle Porter is one of my favorite people in golf media, and it’s always great listening to people talk about their careers when it’s not on their own platform… He joined The Long Game to talk about his life in golf media.

  • As we tend to do most Januarys, we fired up our record player. On a rainy Sunday, I popped on The Clancy Brothers. An Irish band my dad used to listen to.

I’m eating… 

I’m drinking…  

  • A lot of tea and water during my Dry January. Also, probably contrary to the goal of Dry January, I tend to dabble in the world of soda. At Celtics games, I grab a ginger ale and some Swedish Fish instead of a $15 beer. I also love Pepsi’s nitro soda. I find myself gravitating towards the cooler when I’m in CVS. Will probably have one while watching playoff football this weekend.

I’m watching…

  • Still watching Slow Horses. The second season was superb, and Gary Oldman is in full flight.

  • Around the 33 min. mark of this Bryson DeChambeau interview he walks through all of his PGA Tour wins and the disappointment at not winning the FedEx Cup in 2018. I don’t love Bryson, but this was a pretty great deep dive into his background and his career. He also flambés Patrick Reed, calling him a cheater and points out times he’s watched him take shady drops. “He’ll do anything to win.”

    • Other topics: the speed of light, black holes, his feud with Brooks, sucky Cobra drivers, and his favorite movie (Interstellar)

PLUGS

New stuff:

  1. The newest Bay State pod is a solo jaunt through five highlights from my quest thus far. (Spotify)… Youtube below.

  2. I joined the Course of Life podcast a couple weeks back and talked about golf in Massachusetts.

  3. I dropped my 2023 Composite Course on Instagram over the last couple of weeks.

  4. Last week, I did a solo pod digging into my 2023 New Course Rankings.

Other Stuff:

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