World Golf Hall of Fame member Lanny Wadkins is winding down his 13th season of serving as the lead analyst for Golf Channel’s coverage of PGA Tour Champions this week at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club in Phoenix. It will also be his last full season.
“I’ve had my run,” Wadkins, who turns 75 next month, told Golfweek in a phone conversation. “It’s time.”
Wadkins will retire after working one final telecast at the season-opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai on the Big Island of Hawaii in January, which also coincides with the Tour’s transition to having the TV broadcast team call PGA Tour Champions and Korn Ferry Tour events from its new studio that was built next to the Tour’s Global Home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. [A test run of how this will work next season is being conducted this week for the first time.]
Wadkins, who won 21 PGA Tour titles over the course of his playing career, including the PGA Championship, and was a former U.S. Ryder Cup captain, has known for a couple of years this move was coming and it would require him to fly to Jacksonville 15+ weeks a year to be part of the broadcast team with host Bob Papa (and occasionally John Swantek) and fellow commentators such as John Cook, John Mahaffey, Billy Ray Brown and Phil Blackmar.
“I think that telecast is going to be losing something for all the positives that they can come up with,” Wadkins said. “I think the personal interaction with the players is one of the best things you can do. I know, for example, when I call the tournament in Hawaii, I have breakfast every morning with various players and you get them in a surrounding like that you’re able to get more info from them on what’s going on with their games, who they’re working with, how they’re hitting it, and what they’re trying to achieve, everything else.”
This week, Wadkins is in Phoenix but he noted cost-cutting means he doesn’t even call the action from a booth anymore.
“I’m going to call this tournament, which is arguably the biggest on the Champions Tour, and I’ll sit in the compound, a little 10-by-10 windowless room, and call it off monitors. You know, they’ve just taken it in that direction,” he said.
Wadkins said he found flying from his longtime home in Dallas to Jacksonville between 15 to 20 times a year to sit in a studio less appealing. Papa already has moved his family to Ponte Vedra Beach, and Swantek is a longtime resident of the area. [An on-course reporter still will be at each tournament.]
“They want most of the people that are going to work there to move there otherwise, I mean, for me, for example, they would still be paying for a plane ticket in there, a hotel and per diem and, you know, they’re not saving money on me not living there if I was doing the telecast. So, that seems to be the bottom line in the thinking. I just hope the product doesn’t suffer, that’s my concern,” Wadkins said. “A lot of times, we’d be in the same hotel that most of the players were staying so we’d see them at the bar. And you know, I think that interaction is crucial to getting info that can improve the telecast. It doesn’t always come from me, but it may come from Papa or Cookie or whoever, but only having, you know, a walker on site, it sounds like a really lonely life just being the only person on site, nobody else there, you know, that’s gonna be kind of weird.”
Talent for PGA Tour Champions coverage is chosen by PGA Tour Entertainment not Golf Channel. A replacement for Wadkins will be announced at a later time, and Wadkins will be honored at the tour’s annual awards ceremony at Hualalai.
Wadkins may be hanging up his headset but he plans to stay active in the game with his design work.
“I’ve got six projects going on right now for Invited so I’m covered up. I’ve got two guys working for me. We’re having a very successful run and I’m really enjoying that,” Wadkins said. “And I can control my schedule better too, which is nice. I got grandkids on the way and things like that, so, you know, all the other things in life that you get to do. Think about it: I’ve been traveling 25 weeks a year or more since I’ve been 21 years old. So that’s well over 50 years. So that’s a lot of road time.”
He’s getting to go out on his terms after a 13-year run with PGA Tour Champions following six seasons as lead analyst on CBS Sports’ coverage of the PGA Tour, which ended on a sour note.
“It’s a business that they don’t really train you. They just throw you in there and see if you can do it. I think it took me a couple years to get my footing with CBS, for example. I think that’s why the end there was so kind of sharp because I think I had gotten my footing. I remember the last PGA Championship, which was the last telecast of the year that Jim Nantz and I did in those six years and Jimmy looked at me and said, ‘You were right on the money. You and I have hit our stride. We’re going to be great going forward.’ And a month later, it ended, and I still had three years left on my contract. So, weird business, you know, it’s hard to say what’s happening.”
But Wadkins knows one thing: he enjoyed broadcasting the senior circuit immensely.
“It kept me in the game and I’ve been around guys I’ve known my whole life,” he said.
Asked what he’ll miss most, Wadkins said he is going to miss the people and then complimented everyone from his broadcast partners to his producer. Then he remembered one more thing he’ll miss: martini night with Papa, Cookie and Billy Ray.
“We all like the same vodka, so it was a lot of fun for a while,” Wadkins added.
What night was Martini night?
“Oh, whatever night we’re all there together,” he said. “We weren’t picky.”