Veteran announcer Jim Nantz has signed a new contract with the network that will keep him as the voice of The Masters.
The biggest-name free agent in the sports media world is staying at CBS.
Veteran announcer Jim Nantz has signed a new contract with the network that will keep him as the voice of The Masters, March Madness and the NFL for years to come, his agent, Sandy Montag, confirmed to multiple media outlets Thursday.
News of the new contract was first reported by Sports Business Journal.
Nantz, 61, has been with CBS Sports since 1985, rising to become one of the most recognizable voices in sports broadcasting – and the face of CBS’s most high-profile events.
Last month, Nantz called his sixth Super Bowl — and second with current on-air partner Tony Romo — as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs.
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He’s also working as part of the top announcing team on CBS’s coverage of the men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament and is set to call all three games in the Final Four next month.
Then later in April, he’ll head back to Augusta National Golf Club to anchor the network’s coverage of The Masters.
Nantz’s current contract, which pays him a reported $6.5 million per year, was set to expire this spring. Terms of his new contract were not announced, but last year Romo re-signed with CBS for a deal worth $17.5 million per year.
Dustin Johnson on his first trip to Augusta National Golf Club since winning the November Masters: “That was pretty cool.”
Dustin Johnson was on a cloud looking down on cloud nine heading down Magnolia Lane after his record-setting destruction of the golf course and field en route to winning the 2020 Masters in November.
Going back to Augusta National for the first time since he won the green jacket and fulfilled his childhood dream of winning the Masters wasn’t too bad, either.
For two days during the first week of March, Johnson and his green jacket spent time together at Augusta National taking in the grounds like he never had before and reliving his 2020 romp in which he became the only player in Masters history to reach and finish 20 under to win by five shots.
“That was pretty cool, first time back, going into the Champions Locker Room and stuff,” Johnson said Tuesday in a conference call. “That was a really neat experience. First time I spent the night on the grounds, so that was another like cool first-time experience, and had dinner in my Green Jacket.
“That was a lot of fun.”
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Johnson said he doesn’t feel short-changed that his reign as Masters champion will be a short one – unless he joins Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods as the only players to win consecutive Masters.
“It wouldn’t bother me if I only had it for a day,” he said. “I’ve got one, and five months, a year, one month, a day, it doesn’t really make a difference to me. Probably the coolest thing was when I went back up to Augusta and got to wear my jacket when I was on property.”
He played a couple rounds on the trip.
“The course is in immaculate condition. It looks like it’s shaping up to be a normal Masters, and so I’m really looking forward to that,” he said. “I’m pretty sure when I was playing on most of the holes, I was definitely thinking about the shot that I hit on that Sunday when I played.”
While there, Johnson learned his locker mate is Fuzzy Zoeller. But he did not finalize what he will serve to Zoeller and others among the green jacket fraternity on Tuesday night of Masters week at the Champions Dinner.
“I should be able to tell you tomorrow. I’ve got a call when we’re done to do the menu,” Johnson said.
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Hopefully, he won’t be too nervous at the dinner to enjoy the meal he’ll serve, not like he was when he started the final round of last year’s Master with the lead.
“I was definitely nervous starting the day because obviously it meant so much to me. So I was feeling it from kind of the time when I woke up,” he said. “I couldn’t hardly even eat any breakfast, really. Took a couple bites. But it was hard to get down for some reason, which I’ve never had that problem before.
“And then on the course, too, I remember walking the seventh trying to eat a little bit of an almond butter and jelly sandwich and took one bite and had to wash it down with water, and that was the only way I could get it down. I was definitely a little nervous, not in a bad way, more just because it meant so much to me.”
Yet another indication we’re still in a pandemic, Augusta National Golf Club canceled the Masters Par 3 contest again this year.
Yet another indication we’re still in a pandemic came when Augusta National Golf Club delivered some bad news — for the second straight time, the Masters Par 3 contest will not be held.
The event, which precedes the tournament each year, was also scratched for the 2020 Masters. The news came on Monday from ANGC officials.
This marks the third time in the last five tournaments the Par 3 Contest has been canceled as storms forced the event to be nixed back in 2017.
The reigning champ of the Par 3 Contest is Matt Wallace, who topped Sandy Lyle in a playoff back in 2019. It took three sudden-death holes before Wallace prevailed with a birdie on the pairing’s second attempt at No. 8
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Lyle, winner of the 1988 Masters, was attempting to tie Padraig Harrington for the most all-time Par 3 wins at three. He previously won in consecutive years from 1997-98. The event often produces some of the most heart-warming moments of the tournament, such as when Jack Nicklaus allowed his grandson, Gary, to hit a shot during the 2019 event. Gary stepped up and delivered a hole-in-one.
In January, Fred Ridley announced that the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals were both scheduled to return with limited patrons, but there was no mention of the status of the Par 3 Contest.
In Augusta, Georgia, there’s “busy,” and then there’s “Masters busy.” With unknown factors in play, Augusta-area retailers and service providers are waiting to see which “busy” shows up for the city’s legendary golf tournament the first full week of …
In Augusta, Georgia, there’s “busy,” and then there’s “Masters busy.”
With unknown factors in play, Augusta-area retailers and service providers are waiting to see which “busy” shows up for the city’s legendary golf tournament the first full week of April.
The Masters Tournament provides a commercial infusion into the area’s economy each year of a size that has only been estimated, since Augusta National Golf Club doesn’t release attendance figures. Previous estimates from local tourism officials place the annual economic impact at more than $100 million.
The coronavirus pandemic dealt the local economy a double blow last year. Travel restrictions to limit COVID-19’s spread delayed the Masters by seven months. That flattened the traditional spike of commercial activity last April, and dulled the spike last November when the tournament played to empty galleries, with no patrons allowed to attend.
This April, the tournament is allowing a limited number of spectators, but Augusta National has not disclosed that number.
The PGA of America announced recently that ticket sales to the Arnold Palmer Invitational, March 4-7, will be capped at 25%. The Players Championship, March 11-14, will be capped at 20%.
Media outlets in the past several years have tended to use an estimate of 40,000 attendees each Masters Tournament day. When Golf magazine asked Tiger Woods his thoughts last August about a Masters with no patrons, he replied: “It’s going to be very different without 40,000 people there.”
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Using the PGA caps as a proportional rule of thumb, it could be estimated that this year’s Masters would attract between 8,000 and 10,000 attendees.
“My sources are guys in the bar,” said Henry Scheer, the manager of TBonz Steakhouse, one of the more popular hangouts during Masters Week that often attracts caddies and some of the competing golfers. “I don’t know how good that will be, but I heard they’re letting in only 20% of the normal number of people that come in.”
Of course, he added, these are the same customers who told him he’d be busy for the rescheduled tournament.
“During November we weren’t sure how it would be, so we went a little higher than we should have in preparing as far as buying things and stuff,” Scheer said. “For this time, we’re bringing it down. It’s definitely not going to be a normal Masters.”
For Scheer, “busy” is a typical Saturday night, he said. “Masters busy” is, at least, a typical Saturday night every night of Masters Week, from Sunday to the following Sunday, often into the wee hours.
This April, Scheer is preparing for customer flow to be somewhere in between, because of uncertainties surrounding actual attendance and whether visitors will be in “a bubble,” which is how he describes patrons simply traveling to and from the course without otherwise venturing out.
“It’s better to prepare to be busy and not be busy than don’t be prepared to be busy and then get killed. That’s the restaurant business,” Scheer said. “We’ve been beat up before. We’re not going to be beat up again.”
Since COVID-19 is still limiting in-dining restaurant capacity, reducing customers to, say, a third of expected turnout wouldn’t pose a serious issue, said Simon Medcalfe, an economics professor at Augusta University.
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But since the business sector doesn’t know exactly what to expect, the community doesn’t know what kind of economic impact to expect, either, he said. Current conditions make behaviors hard to predict.
“A lot of us who live in the local area, are we still going to be here? Are we going to leave? Are houses being rented? Are houses not being rented? Who’s coming in? What types of people are coming in?” Medcalfe said. “All this is entirely unknown, and that just makes any precise estimate very difficult to provide.”
Getting a glimpse of where this year’s Masters economy is headed could lie within its past performance.
A common method of calculating tourism’s impact on an area is by analyzing the activity of hotels and motels where visitors often stay.
Jennifer Bowen, vice president of destination development for the Augusta Convention and Visitors Bureau, cited revenue gathered from Augusta’s hotel/ motel tax to show the tournament’s impact in a good year and an off-year.
In April 2019, the month of the last pre-COVID Masters, the tax took in $26,266,491. Last November, when COVID kept the Masters patron-less, the tax took in just $8,304,497.
“At the risk of stating the obvious, while we can’t predict the economic impact of the Masters 2021, we believe it will be somewhere in between the full impact we saw in 2019 and the no-patron impact we experienced in 2020,” Bowen said. “It will have an impact, and for that we are grateful.”
Columbia County hotel occupancy also showed a drop, but not as pronounced.
According to data collected for Columbia County by Smith Travel Research, the county’s hotels posted an 87.7% average occupancy rate during the 2019 Masters, April 7-14. For the 2020 Masters, Nov. 8-15, the occupancy average dropped to 74.4%. For the same week in November 2019, the rate was just 56.4%.
A view of the entrance to Magnolia Lane at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo: Andrew Redington/Getty Images)
“So there were definitely people in town who were assisting with the 2020 tournament,” said Shelly Blackburn, executive director of the Columbia County Convention and Visitors Bureau. “And I think the main reason why we saw them in hotels is because schools were still in session, not as many people were willing to rent houses, and it wasn’t a typical break for our community as a whole. So I think that really pushed a lot of those vendors into hotels.”
Blackburn said she expects a similar pattern in April, but consumer circumstances have moved closer to normal. Spring break for Augusta-area public schools typically falls during Masters Week in April, and families seize the opportunity to leave town on vacation, often renting their vacated houses to visitors.
Columbia County hotels fared better than expected overall in 2020, starting in the summer, Blackburn said. Occupancy was buoyed by stays from traveling health professionals, construction crews for road projects and Amazon support staff connected to an Amazon fulfillment center under construction near Appling.
But when she emailed a small survey to Columbia County hoteliers last week to gauge occupancy for the next Masters, she said she got no responses.
“Unfortunately, April was by far the worst month in 2020 for all of the hotels,” Blackburn said. “And it’s such a competitive industry anyway, so they’re a little gun shy. They don’t know what to expect, and they’re worried.”
Housing rentals for Masters Week can prove more lucrative but are harder to track in terms of calculating economic impact. The Masters attracts many deep-pocketed golf fans, both individuals and corporate clients, who prefer to rent houses for the week, sometimes including household staffs who cook and clean while the tenants enjoy the tournament.
The Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce oversees the Masters Housing Bureau, the only home-rental service sanctioned by Augusta National. Chamber President and CEO Sue Parr said business at the bureau is “not as brisk” as in past years, but homes are still in demand and inquiries still come in every day.
“We’ll probably keep getting inquiries right up until April, which is typically how that happens,” she said. “But certainly it’s hard to calibrate this year with very unusual circumstances.”
Prospective visitors still are looking at several travel and lodging options even as the tournament draws closer, rendering the situation “impossible” to judge where the market is or where it should be, Parr said. The scope of inquiries could change as the COVID-19 vaccination rate improves or if reports brighten from Europe, since Masters patrons visit from all over the world.
“It’s just an unusual year we’ve had here, but I think the community is prepared for whatever happens,” she said. “We’ll just take it one day at a time and I think we’ll have a great Masters Week.”
The announcement that the 2021 Masters would allow only limited attendance in April has cast a somber mood over the city of Augusta.
The Masters gets underway in 45 days, and still Augusta National Golf Club hasn’t made public how many patrons will be allowed to attend the season’s first major when it returns to its traditional April date as a rite of spring.
Cameron Wiebe, the general manager of Champions Retreat down the road in nearby Evans, Georgia, host site for the first two rounds of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur the week before the Masters, says the local community still hopes the Masters will breathe life into the Augusta economy.
How much did a patron-less Masters hurt local businesses? Wiebe says it was “significant” before elaborating that the corporate hospitality that the club typically hosts when Augusta becomes the center of the sporting universe for one week was all but non-existent in November and was consistent with the rest of the clubs in town. A foursome at Champions Retreat during Masters week typically goes for $3,000 and includes caddie and cart, all-you-can-consume food and beverage until 5 p.m. and a $50 merchandise credit for each player. (Wiebe said other private clubs in the area open the gates that week too: Palmetto Golf Club in Aiken, South Carolina, charges $3,000 for a foursome, Augusta Country Club $2,500 – F&B not included – and Sage Valley doesn’t officially open up “but if you give them $3,600 you can get a time.”)
“The November Masters was a 5-percent Masters,” he said, referring to the typical revenue earned that week. “We’re hoping for a 30-percent Masters in April, and for 2022 the world here would hope for a 75-plus-percent Masters.”
The announcement in January that the Masters would be played in front of a limited audience once again cast a somber mood over the city. The hope is that Augusta National will allow 30 percent to 50 percent of its usual capacity in April. This is purely based on anecdotal evidence, but a high percentage of locals have reported being informed they won’t be allocated tickets this year. It has led some to believe Augusta National is trying to support the local community by offering tickets primarily to out-of-towners who will occupy hotels and spend dollars at local establishments that are used to making a killing that week.
There is more availability for Champions Retreat’s luxurious rental units than usual, but some groups, corporations and individuals that are expecting to have Masters access are planning to come back, entertain and, as Wiebe put it, “live it up again.”
Tickets scalpers look for badges along Washington Road in front of Augusta National Golf Club before the Masters on April 4, 2010 in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo: Scott Halleran/Getty Images)
And while attendance will be limited, it still has produced enough demand to jack up prices, a Masters tradition unlike any other for local businesses. A room at The Partridge Inn, a longtime social epicenter of Masters week and part of the Hilton family of hotels, is priced at an average of $959 per night during the tournament compared to $110 per night for Thursday-Sunday this week.
Still, the current headwinds have been a big blow for the city, and the reduced attendance this year won’t go unnoticed.
“This second wave of limited Masters revenue is going to hurt, and it will show itself at some point,” Wiebe said.
An email to ticket holders seems a realization that a second Masters tournament will be greatly influenced by COVID.
Will spectators roam the grounds at Augusta National when the second Masters in six months rolls through this April?
That’s still the hope, although an email to ticket holders seems a sad realization that a second tournament will be greatly influenced by COVID.
“As planning continues on how to stage the 2021 Masters Tournament safely and responsibly, we would like to inform you that Augusta National is delaying the ticket process for Patron Series Badges, which traditionally begins Jan. 1,” an email said, according to ESPN.com.
“Our intention is to communicate our decisions for the 2021 Masters to all patrons of record by the end of January. No further action is needed with your account at this time.”
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The delay doesn’t necessarily mean plans for the 2021 event have changed, but it shows that Augusta National Golf Club is trying to buy a little time to solidify a plan for the 85th edition of the famed tournament,
But players insisted it’s special playing Augusta National under any circumstances.
“There are no bad days out here, and without the grandstands, without all that, people can see and appreciate it,” Augusta native Charles Howell III said. “There’s different angles and different layouts and different ways you can play a hole.”
“Whether there’s fans or not, we’re playing the same golf course and trying to shoot the low score and beat the same players that we have to try and do every single year,” Jordan Spieth added. “It doesn’t change with the patrons. It’s just kind of more the ambiance and what really makes the Masters that next level special is the patrons, but as a competitor, it’s really no change.”
One interesting angle is how Augusta National might retract tickets from those who had been told their 2020 badges or practice round tickets would roll over to the 2021 event if a smaller number of patrons are allowed to attend.
The deadline to apply for 2021 practice rounds and daily tournament tickets was June 21.
The cost for practice round tickets was $75, while daily tournament tickets were listed at $115.
