The Waste Management Phoenix Open will get underway with Round 1 on Thursday morning from the beautiful TPC Scottsdale.
The Waste Management Phoenix Open will get underway with Round 1 on Thursday morning from the beautiful TPC Scottsdale.
This is one of the best and most rowdy weekends in golf including the famous 16th hole which is always a good time. Brooks Koepka will return to TPC Scottsdale after winning the 2021 WM Open title and will be amongst some of the best golfers in the world.
Here’s everything you need to know to follow the action, including Featured Groups for PGA TOUR LIVE and expanded coverage on ESPN+.
ESPN+ will have exclusive coverage in the mornings and will also have coverage in the afternoons. You can follow all the action here with expanded and extended coverage for PGA Tour Live. Click for more details.
Featured Groups & Holes: 9:45 a.m. – 6 p.m. ET on ESPN+
PGA Tour Odds and Betting Lines
PGA Tour odds courtesy of Tipico Sportsbook. Odds last updated Thursday at 1:00 p.m. ET.
Want some action on the PGA Tour? Place your legal sports bets on this game or others in CO & NJ.
We recommend interesting sports viewing/streaming and betting opportunities. If you sign up for a service by clicking one of the links, we may earn a referral fee. Newsrooms are independent of this relationship and there is no influence on news coverage.
The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am begins on Thursday from the gorgeous Pebble Beach Golf Links.
The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am begins on Thursday from the gorgeous Pebble Beach Golf Links which includes Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, and Monterey Peninsula.
The field will include some athletes as well as celebrities paired up with professional golfers, Patrick Cantlay, Justin Rose, and Jordan Spieth just to name a few.
Here’s everything you need to know to follow the action, including Featured Groups, and Holes.
ESPN+ will have exclusive coverage in the mornings and will also have coverage in the afternoons. You can follow all the action here with expanded and extended coverage for PGA Tour Live. Click for more details.
Thursday, February 3:
Marquee Groups: 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. ET; Featured Groups & Holes: 11:45 a.m. – 6 p.m. ET, all available on ESPN+
Friday, February 4:
Marquee Groups: 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. ET; Featured Groups & Holes: 11:45 a.m. – 6 p.m. ET, all available on ESPN+
Saturday, February 5:
Marquee Groups: 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. ET; Featured Groups & Holes: 11:45 a.m. – 6 p.m. ET, all available on ESPN+
Sunday, February 6:
Marquee Groups: 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. ET; Featured Groups & Holes: 11:45 a.m. – 6 p.m. ET, all available on ESPN+
PGA Tour Odds and Betting Lines
PGA Tour odds courtesy of Tipico Sportsbook. Odds last updated Thursday at 10:00 a.m. ET.
Want some action on the PGA Tour? Place your legal sports bets on this game or others in CO & NJ.
We recommend interesting sports viewing/streaming and betting opportunities. If you sign up for a service by clicking one of the links, we may earn a referral fee. Newsrooms are independent of this relationship and there is no influence on news coverage.
Golf Channel is set to make some personal history with its coverage of women’s college golf in 2022.
Golf Channel is set to make some personal history with its coverage of women’s college golf in 2022.
The network will air its first all-women’s regular-season college tournament when the 2022 Darius Rucker Intercollegiate presented by PXG tees it up Feb. 28-March 2 at Long Cove Club in Hilton Head Island. South Carolina will host a handful of national-title contenders as a loaded field descends on the island: Alabama, Arizona State, Arkansas, Auburn, Baylor, Duke, Furman, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Louisville, North Carolina, Northwestern, Texas, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest.
Past individual champions of the event include Maria Fassi (2018, Arkansas), Emilia Migliaccio (2020, Wake Forest), and Cheyenne Knight (2016 and 2017, Alabama).
Golf Channel’s men’s college coverage for the spring begins next week with the Southwestern Invitational at North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village, California, Jan. 24-26. Defending men’s national champions Pepperdine play host to a loaded field that includes five top-25 teams: ASU, Georgia, San Diego State, San José State, SMU, Texas, UCLA, UNLV, USC, Wake Forest and Washington.
Migliaccio, who both played and broadcasted during last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur, will join Billy Ray Brown as an on-course reporter.
The former Palm Beach Post sportswriter, 67, was golf’s original insider.
Tim Rosaforte, who rose from a newspaper reporter to become one of the top American golf journalists, died Tuesday of Alzheimer’s Disease. The Jupiter resident was 66.
Rosaforte was only the second person in his family to go to college, using that determination to become a sports writer and eventually one of the most popular announcers on Golf Channel and NBC Sports as golf’s first true insider.
He didn’t have outrageous opinions or wasn’t a former player. Rosie, as he was known, simply told you what was happening behind the scenes, and he had the perspective to make sense of it. With his recognizable bald pate, he became almost as famous as the stars he covered.
Rosaforte rubbed shoulders with presidents, literally, and he had phone numbers to other heads of state. More importantly, he had access to the game’s superstars such as Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and anyone else who mattered. Rosaforte had so many contacts, he walked around with two phones. Legendary announcer Jim Nantz said Rosaforte once had Woods on one line and Palmer on the other.
Rosaforte has been recently honored in several ways: The PGA of America made him its 12th – and first journalist — honorary member. He received last year’s Memorial Golf Journalism Award. The University of Rhode Island, where he graduated in 1977, endowed a scholarship in his name in the neuroscience department. And his hometown Honda Classic named its media room after Rosaforte and created the Tim Rosaforte Distinguished Writers’ Award.
The son of a sanitation company owner in Brewster, N.Y., Rosaforte used his hard-as-tungsten work ethic and can-do personality to attend the University of Bridgeport, where he played as an undersized linebacker and on special teams. There, Rosaforte’s tenacity caught the eye of future Dallas Cowboys head coach Dave Campo, at the time an assistant.
Tim Rosaforte poses between Jack and Barbara Nicklaus during The Jake 2017 event for the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital when Tim was the emcee. (Photo: Jim Mandeville/The Nicklaus Companies)
“Tim was a good player who studied film, took angles, understood limitations, and played hard,” Campo told longtime golf writer Jaime Diaz before Rosaforte won the 2014 PGA of America Lifetime Achievement Award. “He was one of those rare athletes who almost got all of it out of himself.”
Diaz said Rosaforte read that quote and nodded. “That’s me. I took that football formula and that’s my life.”
And what a life it was. Rosaforte’s work took him to places golf fans can only dream about. He covered 147 major championships and 17 Ryder Cups at iconic golf venues such as Augusta National, Pebble Beach, St. Andrews and Oakmont. He didn’t just attend these events, he covered them like the morning dew.
Rosaforte was golf’s original “insider,” one of the first print journalists since Will McDonough to make the transition to network TV. Rosaforte worked at The Palm Beach Post from 1987-94, after stints at the Clearwater Times, Tampa Times and Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, and before moving on to Sports Illustrated and Golf World/Golf Digest.
His first TV gig was alongside veteran Jay Randolph on the old Sunshine Network in the 1990s. Rosaforte moved on to PGA Tour Sunday on USA Network in 2003 before he started appearing regularly on Golf Channel in 2007.
And we do mean regularly. If a story broke, Rosaforte would soon have the inside info.
“I’d receive a call from Tim when nobody else would call me,” said Nicklaus, who first met Rosaforte at the 1980 PGA. “He’ll say, ‘Jack, I need your opinion on something.’ Not many guys would do that.”
“I think one of the reasons Tim was so good is because he knew the game,” World Golf Hall of Famer Nick Price of Jupiter Island said. “He was very passionate about playing the game. Tim would always ask very specific questions. He always wanted to get the answers correct, and that meant a lot to me.”
In a sense, Rosaforte was like Ben Hogan; their success was based on digging – for scoops or the ball out of the dirt. Rosaforte would always make the extra call. Or four. It was in his DNA.
“There’s a lot of insiders in sports today, people like Adam Schefter, Peter Gammons and Tim Kurkjian,” said Geoff Russell, who was Rosaforte’s boss at Golf World and later at Golf Channel. “If you go back 30 years, Tim was doing that before most of them.”
Just not in the same manner.
“He was clearly the trailblazer in this role,” said Tommy Roy, NBC golf’s executive producer. “It seems like there’s so many people out there who are ‘gotcha’ writers. They find a way to rip people and attack them. Tim wasn’t like that. He was so well respected.”
Tim Rosaforte was always comfortable in a golf tournament media room.
Rosaforte gradually built trust with the players – and a list of contacts that his colleagues would dream of having. It wasn’t the number of phones; it was the phone numbers he had that was so impressive.
“I used to kid Timmy, ‘How many U.S. Presidents do you have in there?’ ” said Golf Channel host Rich Lerner. “The question should have been, ‘Who don’t you have?’ The answer was ‘nobody.’
“And he was the last person to let you know about it. He wouldn’t brag like some journalists. There is not an ounce of conceit in him.”
Getting a phone number from the world’s top golfers in the 1980s and 1990s wasn’t easy – you had to build years of credibility — and it’s more difficult these days. Rosaforte kept himself relative with today’s stars through his hard work, perspective and knowledge of the game.
“You have to know when to toe the line between knowledge that you can divulge and you can’t,” Woods said. “I think Tim has done a fantastic job of that.”
In 2013, Rosaforte actually scooped the White House press corps when he broke the story that President Barack Obama was playing golf with Woods at the Floridian in Palm City.
Rosaforte’s only error came when he met President Obama on the range. “I patted him on the shoulder when he walked over,” Rosaforte said. “I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to touch a President.”
Rosaforte wrote four books and served as the president of the Golf Writers Association of America. He was a 12-handicapper whose low-piercing shots were as direct as his opinions.
“You could always trust Timmy,” Ernie Els said. “He would ask the tough question, but he would always treat you fairly.”
Rosaforte started having memory-loss issues at the 2019 U.S. Open. He was taken off the air as doctors originally thought he was having anxiety issues. He was later diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and retired at the end of 2019.
Nantz, whose father died of Alzheimer’s, reached out to Rosaforte in 2020 to have him visit the Nantz National Alzheimer Center in Houston. Doctors determined the Alzheimer’s had advanced and decided against trying experimental treatment because of the potential side effects.
“Tim’s mind was razor sharp for so long and then, all of a sudden he was lost,” Nantz told the University of Rhode Island magazine. “Sadly, due to my own father’s own battle with this insidious disease, I know the heartache it has caused for all who love Tim. (Wife) Genevieve and the girls (Genna and Molly) have handled the caregiving side of this with beautiful grace.
“It’s the untold story of Alzheimer’s. There are more people whose lives are changed almost overnight than just the one who is suffering from the disease.”
Survivors include wife Genevieve, daughters Genna (Nick) Bezek, Molly (Mason) Colling, nephew Grayson, and grandchildren Graham, Finn and Saylor.
New media-rights deals kick off in January and a few tournaments have new dates.
The calendar has flipped and we leave 2021 in the rearview mirror. Bring on 2022.
So what’s new and different in the new year for the PGA Tour?
There’s a new TV and streaming deal in place, so keep that smart TV remote handy. There’s a few tournaments with new dates on the calendar—but the Waste Management Phoenix Open will still ride shotgun with the Super Bowl. And the two major men’s tours are co-sanctioning an event for the first time.
There’s still some familiarity with the schedule. The Players will be in March, the Masters is a fixture in early April, the PGA Championship returns to May for the third time in the last four years, the U.S. Open has its traditional spot in June and all eyes will be on the Old Course for the Open Championship in July.
But there’s plenty of other changes to note, so check them out here.
Tiger Woods will be making his return to the golf course this weekend with no better partner than his son, Charlie Woods.
Tiger Woods will be making his return to the golf course this weekend with no better partner than his son, Charlie Woods, in the PNC Championship.
This will be the first time Tiger Woods will play in a championship since he suffered major injuries from a car crash in Los Angeles. Tiger and Charlie will tee off at 12:18 p.m. ET from the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando.
This will be one that everyone will want to see, so don’t miss it, here is everything you need to know to catch the action.
We recommend interesting sports viewing/streaming and betting opportunities. If you sign up for a service by clicking one of the links, we may earn a referral fee. Newsrooms are independent of this relationship and there is no influence on news coverage.
“I think her knowledge of the tour and the players is better than all of us talking heads.”
Beth Hutter feels a bit like Suzann Pettersen at the 2019 Solheim Cup, walking away from a job she loves on the highest of highs. Hutter won’t strike the winning putt at the CME Group Tour Championship on Sunday, of course, but she will be in the truck orchestrating the drama for all those watching at home.
And daughter Evelyn will no doubt be on her mind.
Hutter, who was reticent to have any kind of spotlight shone on her this week, is a behind-the-scenes VIP for women’s golf as the longtime producer of LPGA coverage for Golf Channel. Over the summer, she made history as the first woman to produce live coverage of the U.S. Women’s Open at The Olympic Club, where she happens to be a member.
And now, while it seems that Hutter is enjoying the peak of her career, the tug of being home with her husband and daughter has her shifting gears.
“My contract was up,” said Hutter, whose daughter Evelyn turns 3 years old in January.
“I’m going to take a year just for me and my family and shut it down.”
Golf Channel producer Beth Hutter poses with daughter Evelyn at the KPMG Women’s PGA (courtesy photo).
Hutter played soccer and softball at Virginia and took a job on Wall Street for six months after she graduated and “hated every minute of it.” The finance major decided to reach out to the local station on Long Island that did a feature on her in high school to see if she could work an internship for six months.
“The cool part is we were a tiny, tiny, tiny station on Long Island in the biggest sports market in the U.S.,” said Hutter. “So since we only had one reporter, they would send me out to do all these sports stories. Go interview the Islanders, I’ve got to go to the Rangers. Or I’ve got to go to the Jets, you do the Giants. Mets, Yankees, Knicks, Nets. We had so much.”
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From there, Hutter went to ESPN before getting hired on in the early days of the Golf Channel in 1999, working on “Golf Central” and getting out on the road four or five weeks a year to work as a replay producer for Keith Hirshland on what was then the Nationwide Tour.
Hirshland believed in Hutter from the start, and it wasn’t long before she produced several telecasts on her own. There was one time, Hirshland recalled, when a teary Hutter came into his office and said she’d made the wrong choice. The job was too big for her.
“I kind of let her get all of that stuff out of her,” said Hirshland, “looked her in the eye and said ‘You couldn’t be more wrong.’ ”
Like many, Hirshland was surprised to learn that Hutter is stepping away from a job that, any given time in the world, only four or five folks have the chance to do it.
“It’s also a really cool job,” he said, “so people tend to don’t stop doing it.”
But he’s thrilled for her.
Beth Hutter and husband David Murvin with daughter Evelyn (courtesy photo).
On-course reporter Jerry Foltz said he has never enjoyed working for someone as much as Hutter. They have a good time on the set. There’s plenty of needling and laughter, and Foltz said he’ll miss that the most.
“I don’t know everything or even anything about producing,” said Judy Rankin. “What I think she has created is a great work environment. We all genuinely like to go to work, and she’s the head of that.”
Hutter made a point to get to know players, inviting rookies to an annual dinner to meet the talent. She loves telling the rich stories of the tour and doing her homework.
“I think her knowledge of the tour and the players is better than all of us talking heads,” said Golf Channel’s Karen Stupples, an LPGA veteran and major champion. “She always has her finger on the pulse of what’s going on across the board.”
This week's @CMEGroupLPGA marks the final event for @GolfChannel lead @LPGA producer Beth Hutter, who has helmed coverage for more than 15 years and spent 20+ years at the network.
Rankin knows what it’s like to raise a child on the road, having raised her son Tuey while competing on the LPGA. She understands Hutter’s desire to replace golf events with ballet class, swimming, tennis, and golf lessons. Evelyn loves to have picnics in hotel rooms, and now they’ll have a picnic every day in Birmingham at the park.
In 2022, Hutter won’t have to worry about missing her dad’s 80th birthday or her brother’s 50th. She and husband David Murvin can celebrate their 10th anniversary at someplace other than a golf tournament, as they did last week.
“It’s a tough decision,” said Hutter. “It’s like having your two favorite desserts, and you’ve got to choose one. For the next couple years, I’ll have the chocolate sundae with Evelyn.”
The 37-year-old former Florida Gator star is starting a two-event tryout.
SAINT SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Matt Every strolled down the practice range at Sea Island Resort, wearing a white hoodie, dark shades and the look of a man without a concern in the world. Instead of gripping a 4-iron this week at the RSM Classic, he’ll be gripping a microphone and making his TV debut for Golf Channel as a guest on-course reporter.
The 37-year-old former Florida Gator star is starting a two-event tryout here and next month at the PNC Championship in Orlando after enduring a season in which he failed to make a cut in 22 starts on the PGA Tour.
“I think it’s going to be good for me to do something different,” he said. “I was going through the motions for quite a while. Mentally I wasn’t there. I think I became jaded and you can’t fake the hunger of a 25 year old who’s never tasted success before vs I’m 37 and not getting any younger. I already didn’t practice a lot and it probably caught up to me.”
Every said he got the idea of becoming a TV golf analyst after seeing the success of Colt Knost, one of his contemporaries, who retired as a player in January 2020 and made a seamless transition to the media world as both a podcast host and Golf Channel/CBS roving reporter.
“We’re very similar in a room,” Every said of Knost. “I’ve had some people whose opinion I value tell me that I’d be good at it and I think I could be. I’m a little different, I do have some edge to me but I’m not out of control, though. I know what’s right and wrong. And I’m not afraid of anyone out here. So, I’ll say what I want to say. I think some people might be afraid I will slip up and say something stupid, but those are people that don’t really know me.”
Every twice won the Arnold Palmer Invitational and more than $10 million in career prize money, but hasn’t made a cut since the Wyndham Championship in August 2020. He missed 20 cuts and withdrew twice in 22 starts last season, and withdrew from the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, his only 2021-22 start, last month.
“I don’t have it in me mentally to go grind on the Korn Ferry (Tour) for a year. There’s no chance,” he said. “That’s me being honest with myself. I don’t want to miss what’s going on in my kids’ lives and it wouldn’t work.”
Every said he’s not quitting golf, calling himself “a recreational golfer,” but isn’t closing the door on the PGA Tour should his competitive juices return. His past champion status should get him into a number of second tier events, what he dubbed “the island tour” – Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, for instance – and if he can earn enough to finish in the top 200 in the FedEx Cup standings, he would earn a berth in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals.
Every always has been one of the more candid interviews, displaying a self-awareness absent in many players. He could be a breath of fresh air to the coverage if he can bring his no-nonsense assessment of his own game to the current players he’s competed against for years. Nearly a decade ago, Every was part of an awkward Golf Channel interview during the Sony Open at Hawaii when then-host Kelly Tilghman grilled him about being arrested for possession of marijuana.
“Yeah, that was awkward, but it was so long ago,” Every said.
Every said he will be shadowing either John Wood or Curt Byrum on Thursday and then the red light goes live on Friday. Golf Channel’s Steve Sands told him to be himself and fight the urge to over-talk.
“I’m hoping if it goes well,” Every said of the tryout, “someone will snag me up.”
Fans who stayed up late for the Zozo were rewarded with extended golfer visits to the broadcast booth.
Golf Channel spiced things up during the broadcast of the Zozo Championship this past week.
You had to stay up late to see it, but if you did you were rewarded with extended visits to the broadcast booth from Rickie Fowler (Thursday), Charley Hoffman (Friday), Pat Perez (Saturday) and Ryan Palmer (Sunday).
Like this classic Saturday Night Live skit with Christopher Walker – “Needs more cowbell!” – PGA Tour broadcasts can use some more spice. Let’s hope this will become a regular thing in the 2020-21 season and not just a late-night experiment that gets shutdown by some suit.
Here are 21 players that we’d like to see as part of what Golf Channel dubbed its “player takeover” segment. Editor’s note: Players are listed alphabetically.
At the PGA Tour stop in Japan, some pros are heading to the broadcast booth after their rounds.
Forget the driving range. This week, at the Zozo Championship in Japan, some PGA Tour pros are heading to the broadcast booth after their rounds to don the headset.
Rickie Fowler, fresh off shooting an even-par 70 that included a triple-bogey at the par-4 17th hole, joined Golf Channel’s George Savaricas in the 18th-hole tower and provided commentary. As Savaricas tweeted out, the plan is for a different player to sit in and do their best Johnny Miller impression each day.
As Fowler joined the telecast, the coverage shifted to the 17th hole with Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama on the tee.
“Well, we’re coming right back to where my hiccup was today,” Fowler said.
“The scene of the crime,” Savaricas added, “of course we had to start with 17, of all of the holes that we had to have Rickie break down.”
When Matsuyama found the fairway, Fowler cracked, “Yeah, that might have saved me a few shots right there.”
The player takeover doesn’t mean lead analysts Nick Faldo and Paul Azinger will be out of a job any time soon. Due to Japan’s extreme COVID-19 travel restrictions, Golf Channel sent a smaller team to the Zozo. Dom Boulet, who commentates regularly in Asia, and Alison Whitaker, who is a regular contributor of European Tour and Ladies European Tour broadcast coverage, are part of the on-air team this week.
“This opportunity presented itself as a creative solution and potential to enhance the telecast,” said Jamie Palatini, Golf Channel’s manager of communications.
Sources say that Charley Hoffman could be moonlighting in the booth following his second round but that is subject to change. In any event, it’s something different to the late-night broadcasts – what my colleague Julie Williams has tabbed “insomnia golf” – and perhaps it could become a regular thing down the road.
Here are some of Fowler’s insights:
Fowler on playing in Japan and his Japanese ties: “I love Japan. …spending the amount of time I did with my grandpa growing up. … Japanese culture is very much a part of how I grew up and a part of the family. I love Japan and I love the culture, I love the food.”
Fowler on upcoming birth of his and wife Allison’s first child due in November: “Things are about to get very real. The room is pretty much ready to go, Allison has been leading the ship there. … she’s running the show and we’re excited, but it’s going to be very different. No names yet, we’re working on it. Our end goal is to go in with two or three potentials and make a game-time decision.”
Fowler on working with John Tillery and recently visiting with his former swing coach, Butch Harmon: “Obviously Butch and I have a great relationship. Working through the kind of middle part of my career together, a lot of good things. And John Tillery and I have been together the last couple of years. It’s been a long road of not so good golf, but there was light at the end of the tunnel at times, and over the last six weeks before going to Vegas, I feel like we kind of really turned the corner and had some good stuff. So, I was excited to just go hit balls with Butch to just kind of show him what we had and what was happening, and ultimately, just to have him say, ‘Good job, keep it going.’ And that’s basically what he did. … So kind of the stamp of approval. … It’s been a fun ride at times, rough at others, but we’re definitely in a better spot.”
Rickie Fowler hits his tee shot on the 13th hole during the first round of the Zozo Championship at the Narashino Country Club in Inzai, Chiba prefecture on October 21, 2021. Photo by Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images
Fowler on the course at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club: “The golf course is great. It’s a very fair test. There’s some holes out there that are just tough, proper golf holes, 17 being one of them. You’ve got to drive it in the fairway and especially today with that pin tucked over on the right. You get plenty of scoreable clubs in your hands, but the defense here really are a couple of tough par fours and then there’s the greens. You can’t see it on TV – TV just doesn’t do it justice – there’s a lot of movement and if you get above the hole, you’ve got to be very careful.”
