The national championship is being staged at Pinehurst No. 2 for a fourth time. Payne Stewart (1999), Michael Campbell (2005) and Martin Kaymer (2014) are the previous winners of the event there.
In 2024, there will be more than 200 hours of coverage on the NBC family of networks, with the main broadcast, featured groups and featured holes as well as and studio coverage on NBC, USA and Golf Channel and streamed on Peacock.
Jim “Bones” Mackay is lightening his load once again – from 14 clubs in a PGA Tour bag to simply a microphone.
Sam Flood, the executive producer of NBC Sports and president of production, confirmed on a conference call with media that Bones is back full time as part of a multi-year deal.
“He will be part of NBC Sports for years to come as we’re going to partner for a long time with him,” Flood said.
Bones previously had been announced as part of the broadcast team for NBC Spots/Golf Channel’s coverage of the U.S. Open next week at Pinehurst No. 2, where he caddied for Phil Mickelson in the final group in 1999 and finished second as well as in 2005 and 2014.
“It’s great for me and I couldn’t be happier about the situation,” Bones said in a separate phone call with Golfweek. “In terms of where I am in my life this is the perfect scenario for me and I couldn’t be more pleased.”
Bones, 59, is regarded as one of the most popular and best caddies in the game. He spent a stretch of 25 years as caddie for Mickelson before joining NBC in 2017 as an on-course reporter and quickly becoming one of the best in the business in that role. He took a step back from his TV gig to join forces with Justin Thomas in September 2021. They won one title together – the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills.
Justin Thomas and caddie Jim “Bones” MacKay look on from the 14th fairway during the second round of the 2024 Players Championship on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. (Photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Their partnership ended after the Valspar Championship in March. When Thomas had been off, Bones still did TV from time to time for NBC, including for the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship last year, and he served as the lead analyst for the Tour’s Mexico Open, the first time an active caddie has ever filled that role.
“I’m going to do several (tournaments) this year,” said Bones of an NBC schedule that still includes the British Open, all three of the FedEx Cup Playoff events and late-season unofficial events such as the Hero World Challenge and PNC Championship. “It’s a bit TBD and will have a more well-established schedule the next few years.”
Bones said he’s game for whatever Flood and longtime NBC golf producer Tommy Roy, who first hired him for a tryout role at the 2015 RSM Classic, want him to do but he expects to contribute mostly as an on-course reporter. Asked whether he will still pursue caddying, he said, “Television is my No. 1 priority and I’ll do what I did before – if someone is sick or between caddies and needs a guy for a week and it’s not an NBC event, then I’d be happy to help out, but beyond that I will be doing TV primarily as far as what I do for a living.”
NBC, USA, Golf Channel and Peacock are teaming up for all the coverage.
The 2024 U.S. Women’s Open tees off Thursday at Lancaster Country Club in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
It’ll be the 79th rendition of the longest running women’s professional golf championship.
“When I was at media day here about a month ago, I used the number nine a lot,” said USGA CEO Mike Whan on Wednesday. “Nine years ago we were here at Lancaster Country Club. This is the 91st time the USGA has teed it up in the state of Pennsylvania, more than any other state in the country. And this is the 999th USGA championship since we began running championships in 1895.”
Here in 2024, the USGA is partnering with the NBC Sports family to bring 26 hours of live coverage on TV with NBC and USA and streaming on Peacock.
USA and Peacock will have 16 hours over the first two rounds with NBC taking over the main TV broadcast over the weekend.
Here’s what you should expect from the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst.
PINEHURST, N.C. — For many years, the United States Golf Association struggled with the idea of whether a U.S. Open could work at Pinehurst. There were questions about the distance from a major city like Raleigh or Charlotte. Would fans make the trip? How much corporate support could be gathered? Not to mention the agronomics.
In 1999 and 2005, those questions were put to bed as the Cradle of American Golf showed it was worthy and capable of hosting the national open. In 2014 the resort even proved it could host back-to-back majors with both the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens in consecutive weeks.
Next month, the USGA’s flagship championship will return to the Sandhills of North Carolina, June 13-16, for not just the first time in 10 years, but for the first time as an anchor site. Back in 2020, the USGA announced plans to build Golf House Pinehurst less than a par 5 away from the main clubhouse, as well as host five future U.S. Opens at Pinehurst No. 2 in 2024, 2029, 2035, 2041, and 2047. As if this year’s U.S. Open wasn’t special enough for the governing body, the 2024 event will be the USGA’s 1,000th championship.
At the U.S. Open media day held at Pinehurst last week, USGA President Fred Perpall said the new buildings on campus at Pinehurst are “a physical manifestation of a relationship that we hope will last forever.” The USGA has built a new equipment-testing facility, innovation hub, museum and visitors center, as well as an office for 70 of its staff.
Here’s what we learned from the media day with regard to what fans can expect from the 2024 U.S. Open and beyond.
USGA flags flap in the wind during a practice round of the U.S. Open golf tournament at Erin Hills. Mandatory Credit: Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Sports
Importance of anchor sites
From an outside perspective, it’s a little weird that the USGA has planned out its future U.S. Open host sites until 2051. Chief Championships Officer John Bodenhamer would argue it’s important for the growth of the championship to establish anchor sites like Pinehurst, Oakmont and Pebble Beach in order to continuously improve and not take any steps back.
“We can do so much because we know we’re coming back,” he said. “Golf House Pinehurst and that dream is becoming a reality.”
In addition to the two new buildings that will entertain and teach fans about the history of the game and governing body, the championship has become more sustainable, as well. With its investment in Pinehurst, the USGA has eliminated diesel generators and more than 50,000 gallons of diesel fuel won’t be used due to powerlines underground. New underground waterlines will aid concessions and hospitality venues. It’s all subsurface and additive and spectators will be none the wiser.
“I will tell you that anchor sites come from some mistakes of the past too,” added USGA CEO Mike Whan. The USGA would go to a place like Pinehurst in 1999 or 2014 for the championship, then come back 30 days later for a debrief to talk about what they wish they would’ve done or what could’ve been improved.
“Then we’d come back in 20 years and go, ‘How about if we …’ and nobody that did the last (championship) are there and nobody invested in all those things because they didn’t know we were coming back and we didn’t know,” Whan continued. “So to say to Pinehurst, what if we came back this regularly? Or if Merion knew we were coming back or Pebble Beach didn’t guess if we were coming back in eight years or never coming back. What together would we do to make the championship bigger, better, stronger?”
On top of the sustainability developments, a new championship locker room with a tunnel directly to the first tee has been built beneath the clubhouse.
“So those are kind of things I don’t know that we would invest in. Would we have built a headquarters across the street at a place we weren’t coming back to? Probably not,” said Whan. “We’re investing in our anchor sites and so are they and that makes the long-term excitement of those sites even better.”
Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina (Courtesy of Pinehurst Resort)
Over the next 25 years, the USGA will host a championship at Pinehurst every three years, including the four previously mentioned U.S. Opens. The resort will host the 2027 U.S. Women’s Amateur, 2032 U.S. Junior Amateur and U.S. Girls’ Junior, 2038 U.S. Amateur, 2044 U.S. Women’s Amateur and a future U.S. Adaptive Open.
Golf House Pinehurst opens
Golf House Pinehurst officially opened on Friday, May 10, which includes the USGA’s equipment-testing and research facility, the USGA Experience, an outdoor educational landscape feature, the relocated World Golf Hall of Fame and administrative offices for 70 staff members.
According to the USGA, independent studies estimate the total economic impact of the USGA’s long-term presence in Pinehurst, combined with the USGA championships it will bring as an anchor site, will exceed $2 billion to the state of North Carolina.
The USGA Experience and World Golf Hall of Fame will be open from 10 a.m. ET to 5 p.m. ET Wednesday through Sunday, with extended hours until 8 p.m. ET on Thursdays. Admission is free through the month of June. The Hall of Fame features 170 player lockers with more than 3,000 artifacts on display.
Broadcast plans and digital innovations
Chief Commercial Officer Jon Podany and his team don’t have the same challenges at Pinehurst that a venue like Los Angeles Country Club or the Country Club presented. The USGA feels like this is a home game to showcase their product on their new home turf, and they’ve amplified coverage across the board. First up, let’s take a look at TV and streaming.
“Looking back at 2022 when we were at the Country Club on the East Coast, there was a lot of switching back and forth across NBC, USA and Peacock,” said Podany. “What we’re doing for this year is to simplify that for fans so there’s basically only two networks per day, with one variation on Friday just to get that bonus coverage on Peacock.”
Early round coverage switched to USA from Golf Channel a few years ago because USA has 16 million more households than Golf Channel, which gives the championship a wider reach. There will be more hours of linear coverage than any other major at the U.S. Open, including 47 hours across NBC, USA and Peacock, with another 36 hours of coverage of Live From on Golf Channel and Peacock. NBC’s full talent roster will be involved, including the addition of Roger Maltbie and Gary Koch for all four days. The longtime voices were added to coverage after their successful returns to the Players Championship broadcast earlier this year. Now that he’s off Justin Thomas’ bag, Jim “Bones” Mackay will also return as an on-course reporter.
Golf Channel commentator Jim “Bones” Mackay looks on during the final round of the 2023 Honda Classic at PGA National Champion course in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. (Photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
“The expanded number of options for how fans can view the championship, whether that’s the main television screen or second screen on digital, our web and app offerings, you can really follow every shot by every player in a lot of different ways,” explained Podany. “I think fans will enjoy that.”
With golf, the commercial load on broadcasts is always a topic of discussion. Podany said the USGA and NBC are working together to reduce the number of interruptions on broadcasts over the four days.
“We did take steps in the early round coverage last year, and we will be taking those steps on USA, whether that’s the number of promotions we have from the USGA standpoint, NBC’s promotions, commercial interruptions, the number of breaks we take, we are looking at all that to try to present the telecast to the viewers in the best way possible,” said Podany, who also noted that NBC will make the Sky Sports feed available on Peacock (Sky has far less in-action interruptions). The final hour on Sunday will once again be commercial-free thanks to Rolex.
“It’s a balancing act, obviously, because for us and for our broadcast partners it’s gotta make financial sense, so we need commercials within the broadcast,” explained Podany. “Honestly if you look at the breaks per hour on a golf tournament, it’s better than the NFL, college football, NBA. The difference is we don’t have timeouts and natural breaks, coverage is still going on. There has to be a little bit of acceptance of that but we’re trying to improve it as best we can.”
The USGA wanted to provide as many options as possible for fans to take in the U.S. Open, so there will be three featured groups on the digital stream as well as the return of All-Access on Peacock, a RedZone-type channel that will air live highlights on Thursday and Friday.
On-course conditions will be ‘firm and fast’
The U.S. Open is known for being the toughest test in golf with long courses, narrow fairways and heavy rough. The challenge posed to players at this year’s championship will be slightly different. In lieu of long rough will be thousands of wire grass plants in sandy native areas that will make shot execution as much of a mental test as a physical one.
“With Pinehurst No. 2 we feel that the golf course is always close to U.S. Open ready,” said Tom Pashley, the President of Pinehurst Resort. “We don’t have to grow up the rough, we don’t have to narrow the fairways. We focus on firming up the conditions and making sure it’s fast. Now with Bermuda grass greens instead of Bent grass greens, we can’t wait to see how the Donald Ross greens perform under U.S. Open conditions.”
The fifth hole at Pinehurst No. 2 in Pinehurst, North Carolina. (Photo: Fred Vuich/USGA)
Aside from the Bermuda grass, not much will be different from the 2014 U.S. Open. The only other material change will show on the par-4 13th hole, where the fairway was narrowed by 12 yards. The landing area on the 381-yard hole will be around 28 yards wide.
As a whole, No. 2 will play to 7,540 yards from the back tees with a par of 70. The distance is flexible from 7,300-7,500 yards depending on the weather and wind. Putting greens will be rolling 13 plus on the Stimpmeter and the course will be quick, firm and fast.
“We’re known for toughness, and you’ll see it right here on No. 2 in just a few days. But a lot of people have a misconception about tough but fair,” Bodenhamer explained. “It does not mean that our goal is for the winner to shoot even par, but it does mean that we want that winner to get every club in his bag dirty when he wins a U.S. Open, including the club between the ears.”
“We want to test every part of their game. We want them to hit it high, low, left to right, right to left. We want them to think about their golf ball. What happens to when it hits the ground, not just in the air,” he added. “We don’t come in and put a cookie-cutter USGA approach on these great golf courses. We stay true to what Donald Ross intended and the great architects of these great vigils intended.”
“We want players to be able to control the golf ball on the ground, not just in the air.”
Oosterhuis passed away the day before his 76th birthday.
One day short of his 76th birthday, PGA Tour winner and former Masters broadcaster Peter Oosterhuis passed away on Thursday morning according to the PGA Tour.
The Englishman won the 1981 Canadian Open but was probably more known as the longtime voice of the 17th hole at Augusta National during CBS’s annual Masters coverage. Oosterhuis retired from broadcasting in 2014 to deal with early-onset of Alzheimer’s. The London native earned seven wins on the European Tour in a two-year span from 1972-74 and was the rookie of the year in 1969. He also competed on six consecutive Ryder Cup teams from 1971-1981, where he boasts an overall record of 14-11-3. He twice defeated Arnold Palmer as part of his record-tying six Sunday singles wins.
Oosterhuis was the Director of Golf at Forsgate Country Club in Jamesburg, New Jersey, and Riviera Country Club outside Los Angeles from 1987-1993 and then tried his hand at broadcasting. He worked as lead analyst for Golf Channel’s European Tour coverage and then joined CBS, where he covered the Masters from 1997-2014.
He is survived by his wife, Ruth Ann, sons Rob and Rich, stepsons Byron and Matt and four grandchildren Peyton, Turner, Sutton and Lachlan.
In addition to the “Big Break,” Sparks hosted the “Golf with Style” series on Golf Channel.
Longtime Golf Channel “Big Break” host Stephanie Sparks died on April 13 at the age of 50. Born in Wheeling, West Virginia, to Robert and Janie Sparks, Mary Stephanie Sparks was an All-American collegiate golfer at Duke.
She won the 1992 North and South Women’s Amateur at Pinehurst and in the summer of 1993, rattled off victories at the Women’s Western Amateur, Women’s Eastern Amateur and the West Virginia State Amateur.
Sparks represented the U.S. on the 1994 Curtis Cup team and had a brief professional career that was plagued by injuries. She began her pro career on what’s now the Epson Tour and played only one season on the LPGA in 2000 before chronic back pain ultimately ended her career.
Sparks played the role of three-time U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Alexa Stirling in the 2004 movie “Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius” opposite Jim Caviezel.
In addition to the “Big Break” reality series, Sparks hosted the “Golf with Style” series on Golf Channel as well as “Playing Lessons with the Pros.” She also did some on-camera reporting at tournaments.
During her competitive days, Sparks wrote player diaries for Golfweek, offering an inside look into tour life.
Golf Channel’s Tom Abbott worked seven seasons with Sparks as a co-host on the popular “Big Break” series. Abbott, who is on the broadcast team this week at the Chevron Championship, lauded Sparks’ work ethic.
I’ll forever be grateful for the friendships I made in junior golf.
Last week, we lost one of our best @AJGAGolf mates.
“She had been a professional golfer herself,” he said, “so she knew what it was like for the contestants, and she wanted them to succeed. She kind of rode their emotions in a way when we were doing the show.
“She knew how tough it was.”
Sparks’ Kepner Funeral Homes obituary page notes that she was an advocate for hospice care for the last several years of her life and supported Libby’s Legacy Breast Cancer Foundation and the Barber Fund in Orlando.
A private family service will be held in Elm Grove, West Virginia, at Kepner Funeral Home.
Did we not mention in part one of our Q&A with Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee that we talked for more than two-plus hours? There was a lot to unpack, especially about LIV Golf, Saudi Arabia and the future of men’s professional golf. We gave you a …
There was a lot to unpack, especially about LIV Golf, Saudi Arabia and the future of men’s professional golf.
We gave you a couple days to wade through it and now we’re back with more and if you count yourself among the golf fans who is over all the talk about greed, money, power and the split that plagues men’s professional golf, part two of this conversation with Chamblee will be more to your liking.
We’ve broken it into four parts so feel free to jump around to your favorite section.
GWK: Are you buying or selling stock in Tiger Woods?
BRANDEL CHAMBLEE: Are you talking about as a player or as somebody who can impact the game of golf?
GWK: I was thinking more as a player.
BC: It would not surprise me if Tiger Woods won another golf tournament. I think there will be times this year when he plays where his ball speed will get up over 175 miles an hour. I think his golf swing still looks great. As far as I can tell it looks like his chipping is sharp. Putter looks pretty darned good. It wouldn’t surprise me if he won another golf tournament.
If you were to ask me whether or not I was buying or selling whether or not he wins another golf tournament, I’d say the odds are probably not in his favor, as they’re not in anybody’s favor who’s 48, and they’re further not in the favor of anybody who’s been beat up as much as Tiger Woods has been. But last I checked, nobody has done the things that Tiger Woods has done, and that includes Sam Snead.
The idea that Tiger and Sam are tied (for most career Tour victories with 82) is preposterous to me. They’re not tied. Tiger has already won more individual golf tournaments than Sam by five. If you go back and look, Sam has got five tournaments that counted as wins, and I believe one tournament in there where they didn’t even [have a] playoff. So he’s a co-winner with two or three other people. I believe the AT&T at Pebble Beach (formerly the Bing Crosby Pro-Am).
So Tiger has got 82. Sam’s got 77 or 76 individual wins, depending upon how you want to look at it. But he doesn’t have 82. Tiger does.
BC: Tiger. I didn’t think he would come back from the chipping yips. I’ve never seen anybody come back from the chipping yips. He maintained they weren’t the yips and maybe they weren’t and maybe that’s why he was able to come back, but I used to always add the caveat that if anybody could overcome them he would be the one to do it because he had proven himself to be mentally the strongest player, at least in my view, in the history of the game, and I think his 54-hole closer rate speaks to that. I also always said I hope I am wrong. I hope he overcomes it. I just didn’t think he would. I couldn’t have been more wrong on that, and I was happy to be wrong.
BC: Look at him. Since 2017 how many times has he won? Three times. You go look at his strokes gained total from 2013 to 2017, and you look at his strokes gained total now, and he’s roughly half the player that he used to be. That’s not oblivion by a long stretch, but when you’re winning majors and setting the world on fire and winning as often as he was to where he’s at right now is quite a difference.
I think the most dangerous place on any golf course, not OB or not in the water, it’s the driving range. That is the most dangerous spot at a Tour course. We talk a lot about players that make changes and get better. That’s just the nature of our job because they’re at the top of the leaderboards. So it’s a wonderful story. They were this player before, they’re this player now, they’ve made the changes, we laud whoever they’re working with, we laud the changes. We don’t talk as much or even ever about all the players that make changes and are at the bottom of the leaderboard because then they’re gone.
Jordan Spieth talks with coach Cameron McCormick on the driving range prior to the 2024 Sentry at Kapalua Golf Club in Hawaii. (Photo: Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
We don’t dissect that as much but I pay attention to it. I pay really, really close attention to it, all the players that make changes that are nowhere to be found. Yani Tseng is oblivion. She was the best there was, and she’s in oblivion now. But we don’t talk about the changes that led to that oblivion and warn players out there in that regard. What we do say is so-and-so worked with so-and-so and they’re playing better. It makes it sound like making changes is a good thing. More times than not, it’s not. So Jordan Spieth’s changes to his golf swing, they may not be obvious when you just watch him, but if you put it on video and compare it to 2015, I would say it’s substantially different.
He used to have just a slight cup in his wrist at the top. The club was set beautifully. Now he’s got a bow in the wrist and the face is a little bit shut because the whole world has fallen in love with strong grips, bowed left wrists and massive rotation. Did he do that to pick up a little speed, because he did pick up a little speed. But it’s a dangerous thing to start messing with your golf swing.
GWK: As a player, you had the rep of being one of the nicest guys on Tour. What has it been like to transition to being considered one of the most controversial people in golf?
BC: I just feel like I’m doing my job. I adore people just as much now as I did as a player. As a player, you’ve always got work to do. In commentating you’re talking to as many different people as you can to get different points of view, different ideas, bounce your opinions off of other people.
But I’m just doing my job. I’ve said this before; I don’t say things to be provocative. I say things that I’ve researched, thought about, that I believe to be accurate, and oftentimes they’re thought to be provocative. But that’s not the intention. The intention or the role as I see it is to tell the audience what’s not so obvious because by the time we come on the air, I always tease that everything that could possibly be said about golf has already been said about golf. So we’re on air, and my role is to tell the audience what may not be so obvious or what I find to be interesting about that day.
It used to mostly just be about golf, and I enjoyed those days a lot more than these. But the nature of the job is going to be controversial because my job is to tell people why things happen. It doesn’t matter who you are. In telling people why things happen, they’re always going to say ‘Who the hell are you to tell us why things happen?’ People are very comfortable with what happened, what the score was, who hit the most fairways, who hit the most greens. Those things are obvious. But when you try to say why did somebody hit more fairways or more greens or why somebody lost or why somebody won – it ruffles some feathers, but that’s my job, so it comes with the job.
BC: Oh, I’m sure they know I played on Tour. I don’t know that they would know my credentials, if you want to call what I did credentials. I sum up my career as a nice enough career. I played roughly 15 years on Tour. I think you play any sport at the highest level for 15 years it’s a pretty solid accomplishment. I got to 57 in the world. I never cracked the top 50. I would have loved to have done that, but finding somebody who’s 57th at what they do in the world, I think it’s safe to say they’re an expert at it.
I thought long and hard about what I did when I played golf for a living, and I think long and hard about it now. But I would assume they know that I played the Tour.
BC: Probably Nobilo. Frank and I were together 2004 – I don’t remember exactly when he left to go to CBS (2015 and full-time beginning in 2020). But we would have worked together for 12, 15 years, pretty darned closely together.
GWK: Do you miss or reflect on your time with him?
BC: Yes, absolutely I do. I enjoyed his pranks, wit and humor, and I still do. I enjoyed the back and forth. We disagreed fairly often, sometimes sort of famously so. But I always learned from him. He did it his own way, saw things differently than me, and I was better off for the exchange.
GWK: Is there anything you wish you did differently in your working relationship with Lisa Cornwell?
BC: I think to the degree that that’s still being litigated, I’m not allowed to talk about it.
BC: They’re probably worried about having to bleep out every other word. I think Eamon finally cussed on air last week. Somebody sent me the clip and he corrected himself and tried to apologize. But I don’t know. That one might just devolve into one insult after the other for 30 minutes. We’ve worked a few times together. I think we’ve done a couple shows together. I get in my insults, he gets in his insults, and I think we manage to talk about golf to some degree.
BC: You know, I worked for 16 years down in Orlando. So we were 1,000 plus employees down there. I got to know a lot of them fairly well. Not all of them but a lot of them. They knew what I was going to say in edit before I said it. They knew golf cold.
I think everybody at Golf Channel was heartbroken a little bit at not getting to work with people they had worked with for a decade or so. I think moving to Stamford is a net positive in terms of higher production values. The studios are massive. They’re blinged out. They look great. We’re going to have more tools up there. But I think they’ve hired a lot of enthusiastic, sharp-as-hell people that I absolutely love to work with, but I miss the people that I used to work with. But I absolutely love the people that I work with now.
GWK: Does Golf Channel give you any notes about your hair, and if so, do they want it a certain way?
BC: No, they don’t. But the makeup ladies, if it’s sticking up, they run out with the hairspray or whatever. They would love it if I used hairspray. But I’m not a fan of hairspray. So yeah, occasionally it’s sticking up here, there and everywhere. It’s a fairly constant source of good-natured ribbing from them.
BC: I’d be happy to do both. When I was doing the analyst at The AmEx I thought ‘Could I do both?’ That week, you’re so engaged in the golf that when you get off the show I can tell you every shot hit all day long. So, I’d be happy to do both of them. I think “Live From” is such a fun show to do. I love the spontaneity of it. They are long enough shows to where at a certain point the script gets thrown out the window and you just react. When they asked me to call some live golf, I was like ‘You guys are the bosses, I’ll do whatever you want me to do.’ I certainly enjoy the challenge of it.
The hard part about finding someone to do the job is getting someone to do it for a couple of million bucks. Tour players live in fantasy land where a couple million dollars is nothing. And then getting somebody who 3-4-5 years down the road can talk about players they don’t compete with anymore as well about players they no longer know as well. To do so, you have to work your ass off.
To find someone who doesn’t want to play golf, who will do it for a few million bucks, is articulate, opinionated and will do the work is a hard person to find. Trevor Immelman (CBS’s lead analyst) is unique in that he completely lost his game. I don’t know what NBC wants to do in that role but I think they want to take their time making that decision and I think they’d be crazy not to get Tiger Woods. I would love for Tiger to be in that chair. It would be awesome. I don’t know what that would cost but seems to me it would be worth every penny.
GWK: Tell me one good story that personifies your dad and the way he raised you.
BC: I’ll give you a couple. Energy crisis in the ’70s, couldn’t get gas. I wanted to go play in the Texas-Oklahoma junior in Wichita Falls, which I think that’s a couple hundred miles away. It wasn’t our day to get gas, I guess, and none of the cars had much gas in them, and it was time for me to leave. My dad came in, and he’s like, ‘Hey, pack up, let’s go. Let’s go to the Texas-Oklahoma in Wichita Falls.’ My mom is like, ‘Harold, there’s no gas in the car,’ and he’s like, ‘I’ll find gas.’ I remember throwing the clubs and suitcases in the car and got in and there was less than a quarter tank of gas.
I think he stopped on some farm and went in and introduced himself to the farmer, paid him for a tankful of gas because my dad was a real friendly guy. But he drove out in the middle of the country. He didn’t get on the highway and go to a service station because the lines were too long or it wasn’t his day. He drove to some farm and talked a farmer into giving him a tank of gas. They became fast friends. Yeah, that sums up my dad.
I had just started playing golf when I got into high school, so I wasn’t very good at golf. I was shooting in the 90s. Everybody it seemed like that I was playing against was shooting 68 or 70. There are a whole bunch of players I grew up with that made it to the Tour.
So the high school golf final was coming up, and my dad said to me, the night before first round, he’s like, ‘Hey, son, go out there and have fun tomorrow, don’t sweat it. If you don’t make it, we’ll put together a schedule for you, we’ll find places for you to play, and I’ll get you there. Don’t worry about it. Go out and have some fun.’ That summed up my dad. He was always there.
Then I don’t know how he did it, but in the mid-’80s, early to mid-’80s, his businesses, he was having some trouble, but I never knew it. He still managed to put everybody through college, pay for cars and insurance, and send me to golf tournaments, and I never heard him complain once, never, not one time.
BC: Well, that sums up my dad, too. That was a good one.
I had just won the Dallas Junior or the Dallas Men’s, and I was out playing at a pretty famous golf course in Dallas called Cedar Crest, famous for a lot of reasons. They played a major there in the ’20s that Walter Hagen won, but also a really famous gambling club. Big gambling. Of course that’s true of most municipal courses in Dallas. But I was out there playing with some high school buddies, and this elderly gentleman, Black man came up to me and asked me if I wanted to play a match for $100 a hole. He was going to play me with three clubs and I could pick two clubs. That was the game.
I said, ‘Well, I can’t do it now because I have a game but I’ll come back next weekend and play you.’ He’s like ‘But you’ve got to have $900, I’ll have $900, we’ll both put it up and give it to the head pro or whatever before we play, and we’ll play $100 a hole for the nine holes.’ He told me he was going to use a 7-iron, a wedge and a putter. So I went home, and at the time I was working in the bag room at Las Colinas Country Club, and I had $300, $400, $500 that I had saved up and I told my dad that I needed to borrow the rest of it, $400 or $500, and my dad said, ‘Explain the game to me.’ I said, ‘This guy is like 70 years old and he’s going to play with three clubs, and he told me I could choose any two clubs and we were going to play nine holes, $100 a hole.’
I had a week to practice and prepare for it. My dad goes, ‘All right, I’ll loan you the money, but you’re going to get your ass beat.’
I said, ‘Dad, there’s no way I’m going to get my ass beat.’ I said, ‘There’s not a chance. This guy is like 75 years old.’ Then my dad told me that he put himself through college playing 9-ball and 8-ball and he was the best pool player there was in Lubbock, Texas, and then he explained that a man came in one night and spotted him everything and gave him the break, and my dad said after the break he never shot again. He goes: ‘There’s always somebody better. If a guy comes to you with a game and proposes a game, he’s thought about this game more than you. He knows his game. I’m just going to tell you you’re going to get your ass beat.’
Anyway, so I went out and I played with an 8-iron and a putter because I could blade the 8-iron with a Top-Flite, and it would roll out 250 yards because the fairway was rock hard. I could punch that 8-iron 160 yards and I could chip with it, hit bunker shots with it. I shot 2-over par on the front nine with an 8-iron and a putter, 2-over, and I lost $300. So I was able to give my dad his money back, but when I came back in, my dad was sitting on the couch or his chair and he said, ‘How did you do, son?’ I said, ‘I shot 2-over.’ He goes, ‘How bad did you get beat?’ I said, ‘I got beat pretty bad.’ He said, ‘I told you were going to get your ass beat.’
But that man that I played got on the first tee and sure enough he had a 7-iron, a wedge and a putter, but the 7 had a 2-iron loft on it and a driver shaft, and it said 7-iron on the bottom, and he smoked it.
GWK: Who was the hustler?
BC: His name was Nate, he was a fella that used to travel with Titanic Thompson and gamble with Titanic Thompson, the most famous gambler ever. They were really good at going into cities and finding guys who thought they were really good, which I would fit that bill, and then betting them and make it look like they were going to have a chance. I had no chance. He wanted to play the back nine. I was smart enough to quit. I made every putt I looked at and shot 2-over.
Another story is when I was 11, my brother and I had fancied ourselves as cowboys, my older brother, and we wanted to be cowboys. We wanted to see what it was like to pack our saddle bags full of chili and take off and ride.
So we set out to ride our horses to Lake Tawakoni. That’s 100 miles. I was 11, my brother was 13. My mom, as any rational mother would be, was dead set against it. But my dad was like, ‘They’re going to be fine. Let them be boys.’
To reassure my mother that we would be fine, he drove the route there so we took specific roads, and at night, we would put a sign out saying we’re camped right here, so they would drive out and see us. My dad was happy enough to let us do that, encouraged it.
The footnote to that is we only made it like two and a half days going 20 miles because we could have made it, but it turns out the horses were not; they get saddle sores, and we hadn’t anticipated them getting saddle sores. Riding them 10 hours a day, they got saddle sores. After two days we ended up on a farm where we played pinball and pool. Some lady thought we had run away and she called my parents and my parents came out to collect us and get the horses, and the lady – until my parents got there, she wasn’t buying the story, that anybody’s parents who were good parents would let them do what we were doing. But that was my dad. My dad was like, ‘You know what, it will be fun for you guys.’
GWK: Update me on your architecture work with design partner Agustin Piza.What is the status of your golf course design product, and what will ‘the butterfly effect’ mean to design going forward?
BC: Well, the butterfly effect is a project that my partner and I are doing in Desertica, Mexico. It’s four six-hole loops that looks like a butterfly. But the butterfly effect is a metaphor. One, it actually does look like a butterfly, but two, it’s also a metaphor which is a butterfly can flap its wings in South America and cause a hurricane. What happens and looks like a small thing can be a big thing and affect the game, and the big deal about this butterfly effect is if you look at trying to get the most golf course in a small area and you look at what you can do with four loops of six holes, that’s four factorial. So that’s four times three times two – that’s 24 different golf courses that you can play.
One of those nines is going to be designed for the best women players in the world because it hasn’t been done yet. I want to do it. I had a project in south Texas that fell through where we were going to build an equivalent of the TPC Sawgrass but for the best women players in the world. Still trying to do it.
Augie and I have another project on the other side of Cabo that’s in the works, and we’ll see how that turns out. We’re still up and going. Augie is doing things, the TGL for Tiger, so Augie is pretty darned busy.
GWK: What’s the timeline on the one in Mexico?
BC: Well, it just got past all the environmental studies, so we’re going to break ground this summer. It’s been a year and a half in the works. It’s in a place where there’s natural springs, there’s white sands. There were a lot of environmental issues to get over.
GWK: What made you think of doing something specifically for women, for the top women?
BC: It’s long been a pet peeve of mine. My wife loves golf. In fact, when she plays at our course, Arizona Country Club, they play a mix of the forward tees and the next tees back, and that course is, I think, 6,000 yards, and that’s way too long for club women to be playing. I think 6,000 to 6,200 yards is the sweet spot, at most 6,300 yards, for what the LPGA should be playing, and they play courses at 6,600, 6,700, 6,800 yards long.
I get there through math and data. Let me see if I can pull the computer up here and I’ll show it to you, but if you look at how many men averaged under 70 last year. I think last year something like 50 men averaged under 70 on the PGA Tour and only two or three women did the same. I don’t think that’s at all because of skill, I just think it’s because they play their golf courses too long. The average PGA Tour course is 7,200 yards; the average LPGA course is 6,600 yards long. The longest woman player on the LPGA Tour is 40 yards shorter than the longest man. The shortest woman is roughly shorter than the shortest man. So if you take 40 yards times 14 tee shots, that’s 560, and then to get on the approach shots the same trajectory and spin rate, they have to be roughly 30 yards closer. So 30 yards times 18 approaches is 540, and you add 540 and 560 you get 1,100 yards. Subtract 1,00 yards from 7,200, yards you get 6,100 yards. When is the last time you saw women hitting 6- or 7-irons on par-5s fives the way men do regularly. I think it would be more exciting golf if you’d see more eagle opportunities, you’d see them driving par-4s the way the men do. Scores would be lower. It would be a better stage for them if they played yardages that would give them the equivalent trajectories and angles of descent into greens to stop them as fast as men do, and the scores would be lower.
I’ll give you a case in point. If you watch the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, that left bunker really comes into play on 18. When the men get in that bunker, they pull a 7- or 8-iron out and they pick it out and they knock it right up on the green. That bunker is designed for the best men players in the world who have more club head speed so they can hit it higher and get higher lofted clubs out of there.
When the women get in there, they cannot get it out, so they have to just pitch out or they hit the lip. So it looks like they’re not talented enough to get it out. It’s not that at all. These women are unbelievably talented. It’s just the bunker wasn’t designed for the best women players in the world, it was designed for the best men players in the world. So imagine that bunker being further up, not as deep. Women drive it in there and they hit 7-iron in there and hit it two feet from the hole and win the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. It gives you a heroic moment that was unrealized just because they’re not playing a golf course designed for the best women players in the world. Most golf courses are designed – if they’re tournament courses – they’re designed for men players, and then they try to move the tees around in such a way that women players can play it, but they’re not designed with them in mind.
The main TV booth sits on the 17th hole, a par-3 island green at Seville Golf and Country Club.
GILBERT, Ariz. — The LPGA has rolled into this suburb about 20 miles southeast of Phoenix for the inaugural 2024 Ford Championship.
That means the TV production facilities of NBC Sports/Golf Channel are also here, plugged in and ready to televise 12 hours of live prime-time coverage over four days across Golf Channel on TV and Peacock for those streamers out there. The tournament will be live from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.
The main TV booth where lead play-by-play voice Grant Boone and analyst Karen Stupples will be situated sits on the 17th hole this week. Seville Golf and Country Club is hosting and is known for its island green par 3, a perfect backdrop for calling the action.
Begay’s audition follows appearances from Kevin Kisner, Brandel Chamblee, Luke Donald and Jim “Bones” Mackay.
Another week on the PGA Tour, another tryout for the open chair calling golf for NBC.
Notah Begay is jumping on the revolving carousel of lead analysts for the network for this week’s 2024 Valspar Championship at Innisbrook Resort‘s Copperhead Course in Palm Harbor, Florida. The 51-year-old has done well in his role as an on-course reporter for NBC and Golf Channel since he joined the network more than a decade ago and has taken a stab at commentary in the past.
“I’m excited and nervous,” Begay said to Golf Digest. “If we go back to (Johnny Miller), he made it look so simple and spoke from a strong position of experience. (Paul Azinger) did a wonderful job with his energy, and you could tell he still really loved to watch the game of golf.”
Begay is the latest talking head to throw his hat in the ring after Azinger wasn’t re-signed for the 2024 season, joining the likes of Kevin Kisner, Brandel Chamblee, and Luke Donald. Jim “Bones” Mackay also sat in the chair during the Mexico Open on an off week caddying for Justin Thomas.
“I mean, there’s a definite pressure, but that’s what professional athletes deal with all the time,” he said. “I spent a career dealing with pressure. … It’s a different kind of pressure because you’re being critiqued and evaluated, and that’s OK. We should be scrutinized and called out when we make mistakes because we should be ready for the big moments.”
“You hate to lose at anything,” he added. “You get to the PGA Tour because you don’t like to lose. But these decisions are made in the best interest of the NBC team, so whatever decisions are made, I’ll support it 100 percent. My job at that point, if it isn’t me, is to support whoever’s in there and allow them to be the best they can possibly be.”
Known for his connections to Tiger Woods after the pair were teammates at Stanford, Begay turned pro in 1995 after the Cardinal won the NCAA Championship in 1994. He won four times on the PGA Tour from August 1999-July 2000 and then struggled with injuries and form before he joined the NBC crew in 2012.
Kaufman confirmed Tuesday on “Live from The Players” on Golf Channel that he and Kisner would again comment on golf shots live from the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass during the 2024 Players Championship. The duo will team up for Kaufman’s “Happy Hour” for an hour during Friday’s coverage.
Fans have long clamored for golf broadcasts to change and be better for viewers. Kaufman and NBC Sports have taken big steps this year by trying something new and unorthodox, but it’s working.
