Johnny Miller – Page 2 – Syndication Server

Will a revolving door of voices make golf’s TV broadcasts better or worse? And why so much turnover?

It will be different watching golf in 2023 and not hearing Faldo, Maltbie or Koch.

Each PGA Tour season starts with new faces and new names for fans to learn and embrace. Whether it is a raw rookie fresh off the Korn Ferry Tour, a college star getting a handful of starts and making some waves or a European player taking a shot at the U.S.-based tour, there is always something new.

But in recent years, the new faces aren’t just on the golf course. The faces have come with new voices to the broadcast booths of PGA Tour events. That carousel seems to be spinning faster and faster these days.

At NBC, Gary Koch and Roger Maltbie, two long-time golf announcers who are both in their 70s, are out as 2023 begins. They are replaced by Brad Faxon and Smylie Kaufman, two more former players.

At CBS, Nick Faldo left as lead analyst at the end of the network’s coverage in 2022. Faldo will be replaced by Trevor Immelman, a former Masters champion. Immelman, who was already on the CBS team, is 42. Faldo is 65, and he apparently wanted to work a more limited schedule. CBS decided that didn’t work for the network, so Faldo retired.

So the voices get younger as 2023 begins, and it seems like a lot of change for the two main networks that cover the PGA Tour (Golf Channel covers its own PGA Tour tournaments as well as sharing producing and voices at times with NBC and CBS). But have things really changed that fast this year, or is it just the world of social media that has pushed the idea that changes have come at a break-neck speed?

Remember Johnny Miller? It might seem like a long time ago when Miller stepped down as a straight-talking lead analyst for NBC. But it was only in 2019 that he ended a nearly three-decade career with the network. Former PGA champion and Ryder Cup captain Paul Azinger stepped in for Miller.

That was about the same time, by the way, that CBS, in an effort to freshen its golf broadcasts, said goodbye to Gary McCord and Peter Kostis, a pair of voices who had been with CBS for three decades themselves.

And of course, David Feherty didn’t hold back when explaining reasons why he left NBC/Golf Channel to go to be LIV Golf’s biggest broadcaster.

“Money,” Feherty told the Toledo Blade. “People don’t talk about it. I hear, ‘Well, it’s to grow the game.’ Bull … they paid me a lot of money.”

The LIV Golf Invitational Series is still without a television partner, but Feherty’s move gave the Greg Norman-led, Saudi Arabia-funded upstart circuit a known name on its broadcast team. He made his debut at LIV Bedminster.

Dan Hicks, Johnny Miller, and Sir Nick Faldo of The Golf Channel discuss the action during the first round of the 2012 Hyundai Tournament of Champions. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

Changes happening all the time

And there have been other changes. Jim “Bones” MacKay, longtime caddie for Phil Mickelson, became a respected on-course commentator for NBC before returning to caddie duties for Justin Thomas. John Wood, another longtime tour caddie, is drawing raves for his work for NBC.

That might seem like a lot of changes in a short period of time. But remember, it was just 20 years ago, in the 2002 season, that Ken Venturi ended a run of 35 years as the lead analyst for CBS.

Networks understand that golf needs to appeal to a younger audience. It’s great that people 50 and over love and watch the sport, because that demographic tends to have more leisure time and more disposable income — things that advertisers crave in a viewer. But the sport needs younger viewers, too, fans who will embrace the sport now and follow the young stars for the next 15 or 20 years or even longer. So younger voices might seem like the right thing to do.

It’s not that Maltbie or Koch or McCord or Kostis did a bad job of reporting on PGA Tour events or were rapidly deteriorating as broadcasters. But inevitably, older voices get pushed aside by younger voices. That’s true in any part of media or entertainment.

Faxon has some experience in broadcasting and has shown he can hold his own. Kaufman, once a rising player on the tour whose game disappeared with a string of missed cuts in his last three years, proved to be a breakout star working for Golf Channel and NBC last year. Immelman has been a strong part of the CBS team for several years and should fit in fine at Augusta National, where he won in 2008.

But it will be different watching golf as 2023 begins not hearing Faldo or Maltbie or Koch. Some familiar voices, such as Mark Rolfing at NBC and Ian Baker-Finch at CBS, remain, as do the main anchors for their network, Dan Hicks at NBC and Jim Nantz at CBS.

Will it be better or worse? Chances are it will be about the same, with the networks throwing in some technical innovations but hanging on to the tried and true method of broadcasting a PGA Tour event. Sometimes it isn’t the voices that need to be freshened, it is the approach to the broadcast itself that gets stale.

Either way, golf will look familiar in 2023 on NBC, CBS and Golf Channel, even if it sounds a little different.

Larry Bohannan is the golf writer for The Desert Sun. You can contact him at (760) 778-4633 or at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan. Golfweek’s Cameron Jourdan contributed to this report.

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Where’s Johnny? Phil Mickelson isn’t the only World Golf Hall of Famer missing at the Fortinet Championship

When Miller competed in the 1968 Kaiser International Open, he could sense there was something special about Silverado Resort.

NAPA, Calif. – Phil Mickelson isn’t the only World Golf Hall of Famer missing from this year’s Fortinet Championship. The event is also Miller lite – as in Johnny Miller.

The two-time major winner and retired NBC Sports lead golf analyst has served as tournament ambassador ever since he helped lure the event here in 2014, making appearances on the television broadcast and partaking in the trophy ceremony on Sunday. It had become one of the few times that Miller, 75, made a public appearance since retiring from NBC in 2019.

Why the change? Primarily because Miller is no longer an owner in Silverado Resort, the host course of the tournament, after being embroiled in a lawsuit. Miller purchased a 30.6-percent stake in a limited partnership that bought the famed resort in 2010 and sold the landmark property, which includes two Robert Trent Jones Jr. courses – the North and the South – in February.

When Miller first stepped foot on property to compete in the PGA Tour’s 1968 Kaiser International Open as an amateur, he could sense there was something special about the place.

“I liked the country, the courses, the open fields, the smells,” Miller once said. “It felt like home.”

So much so that after turning pro and marrying his wife Linda, they honeymooned at Silverado in one of the condos.

“One thing led to another and we bought a condo the next year on the sixth fairway of the North Course, then built a house in ’74 on the lake (at No. 11),” said Miller, who won the tournament there in 1974 and ’75, and had five of his six kids born in Napa.

In 2010, Silverado went on the market and Miller partnered to buy the resort and spa with among others Roger Kent, founder of Rug Doctor, who built the original machine in his garage and sold the company in 2007 after building it to $300 million in revenue. The San Francisco Chronicle reported the price of the resort was for “far upwards of $20 million” – a post-housing bubble discount off of the $110 million the previous Japanese owners paid in 1989 – and then Miller and company set about transforming it. “I saw what Silverado could become,” Miller said at the time.

The white Mansion, overlooking Milliken Creek, is the hub of the 1,200-acre property, with a lounge inside (and media room during the Fortinet Championship). Miller breathed new life into the 36-hole complex in what he has described as the first course he redesigned himself, and has hosted the PGA Tour’s season-opening tournament since 2014. Miller served as the unofficial face of the resort during the event.

But in 2020, Kent sued Miller and his partners in a $50-million lawsuit in which he alleged that his partners “committed fraud, breach of contract, negligence, and misconduct with oppression and malice,” and that the resort was in “dire” financial shape. As first reported by the Napa Valley Register, the complaint said the resort would soon be “insolvent” and had “substantial negative working capital.”

Affiliates of Colorado-based KSL Capital Partners LLC, a private equity firm specializing in travel and leisure enterprises, and New York’s Arcade Capital LLC, a private real estate investment firm that specializes in the hotel management and global wellness space, announced in a Feb. 1 joint press release that they had acquired the property. Terms were not disclosed, but the Napa Valley Register reported the sales price was $62.4 million.

Miller’s presence will be missed at the tournament. A spokesperson at Golf Channel said there were no plans for Miller to join the broadcast this week as he typically did and tournament organizers confirmed that come Sunday when the trophy is to be handed out, it won’t be Miller’s time to do the honors as he had in the past. All that remains are the touches he made to the course and the plaque for Champ’s Bridge that honors Miller’s father, Larry, who called his son “Champ.”

A plaque at Silverado Resort & Spa in Napa honors Johnny Miller’s father, who called his son “Champ.” (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)

Heeeeere’s Johnny: Part II of Golfweek’s exclusive interview with Johnny Miller

Miller on Tiger Woods: “He’s so unusually, fantastically good and he has so much talent that you can’t rule him out.”

Johnny Miller wants to make one thing perfectly clear: he hasn’t done an interview all year.

“If nothing else you have a rare interview,” he says.

For 29 years, if someone was choking during an NBC telecast you better believe he was going to let the viewer know. When he retired in 2019, he said he tried to emulate former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith, who hung up his microphone for ABC’s Monday Night Football and disappeared from the spotlight.

Miller is more than happy to turn up for a golf fundraiser if he believes in the cause and still manages to do a few corporate gigs, but only the Fortinet Championship at his beloved Silverado Resort & Spa, where he is part of the ownership group and typically does a stint in the broadcast booth as well as hosts the trophy presentation, brings him around the life he’s done his best to leave behind.

For Part I of the interview, click here.

Heeeeere’s Johnny: Golfweek exclusive Q&A with Johnny Miller, Part I

On golf announcers: “They’ve always been soft. There’s only been one Simon Cowell and you’re looking at him.”

NAPA, Calif. — Johnny Miller wants to make one thing perfectly clear: he hasn’t done an interview all year.

“If nothing else you have a rare interview,” he says.

For 29 years, if someone was choking during an NBC golf telecast you better believe that as lead analyst he was going to let the viewer know.

When Miller retired in 2019, the winner of 25 tournaments, including two majors, said he tried to emulate former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith, who hung up his microphone for ABC’s Monday Night Football and disappeared from the spotlight.

Miller is more than happy to turn up for a golf fundraiser if he believes in the cause and still manages to do a few corporate gigs, but only the Fortinet Championship at his beloved Silverado Resort & Spa, where he is part of the ownership group and typically does a stint in the broadcast booth as well as hosts the trophy presentation, brings the 74-year-old World Golf Hall of Fame member around the life he’s done his best to leave behind.

Johnny Miller Q&A (part 1), on his career: ‘The start of 1975, I was out-of-control good’

World Golf Hall of Famer and former lead analyst at NBC Sports Johnny Miller took a break from the Safeway Open to sit down with Golfweek.

When Johnny Miller first stepped foot on property at Silverado Resort to compete in the PGA Tour’s 1968 Kaiser International Open as an amateur, he could sense there was something special about the place.

“I liked the country, the courses, the open fields, the smells,” Miller said. “It felt like home.”

So much so that after turning pro and marrying wife Linda, they honeymooned at Silverado in one of the condos.

In 2010, Silverado went on the market and Miller partnered to buy the California landmark, and then set about transforming it. “I saw what Silverado could become,” Miller said.

The World Golf Hall of Famer and former lead analyst at NBC Sports took a break from watching the Safeway Open to sit down with Golfweek and discuss a variety of topics. The conversation went so long that Miller finally asked, “What are we doing here, writing a book?” No, but we’ve decided to break the conversation into two parts. So, check back tomorrow for Part II of this Q&A when Miller talks about retirement, Tiger Woods and predicts the winner of the U.S. Open.

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GOLFWEEK: Have you become softer and less critical when you watch the PGA Tour now that you’re no longer in the broadcast booth?

JM: I don’t know if the word is critical. I see things that the other guys don’t see. When I see those things, I want to share them with the public. If it’s a crappy shot, it’s a crappy shot, it’s nothing personal. If I say it is a great shot, I want people to think, dang, Johnny, thought that was a great shot.

Like in the 2006 U.S. Open, we saw Phil (Mickelson) make two mental errors. You don’t have to play it like you’re on a white horse prancing up to the green. Pop it up there with a 3-iron, hit a 4-iron somewhere around the green, up and in or worst-case scenario you’re in a playoff. That was the biggest fall apart in that U.S. Open on the last hole in history. Harrington bogeyed the last three holes to lose by two. Furyk bogeyed the last hole. Mickelson made double bogey. Montgomerie got hosed, I thought. He had to wait for like 5 minutes. I thought he got such a bad break there. Then he chili-dipped it short of the green and didn’t get it up and in. Never has the last hole had so many scenarios. It was just incredible. That course is tough. Oakmont and Winged Foot must be the two toughest courses in tournament golf.

GW: What did you think of NBC reacquiring the U.S. Open broadcast rights?

JM: If I had known that, I might have gone another year. It wasn’t like I had to retire. I’m happy for them. I don’t know how committed Fox was, but NBC is turning out the guns to make it a fantastic Open. Tommy Roy and Tom Randolph are like savants when it comes to TV golf and they’ll make it back to where it should be.

GW: What did you think of Phil Mickelson’s guest appearance in the booth with CBS at the PGA Championship?

JM: They asked me who do you think could do a good job the way you like to see it done, and I said Tiger and Phil and I think Phil is even more outspoken. Both of those guys with their intellect and pedigree, Phil, I thought, was fabulous on TV. He’d probably like everyone to go home and he’d do all the jobs. Phil’s an amazing guy. He can talk. He doesn’t say, ‘In my opinion,’ but he can talk. All the great players are a little that way in they think they know it all and they make good decisions, which is a mark of a champion.

GW: What did partnering with Jack in the 1973 World Cup in Marbella, Spain do for your game?

JM: That was huge. Winning the U.S. Open in 1973 was fun and it was nice, but to play with Jack all week, and at that point I knew Jack was the best player and I held him on a bit of a pedestal and I thought he was way up here and I was down here. Whether it was youthful thinking, I started comparing every part of his game to mine. He hit it like 5 yards longer than me off the tee and he was maybe a little better than me with his long irons but I was definitely better from the 5-iron through wedge in my mind. It wasn’t even that close. I broke the course record on Friday and won the individual. To play with him that many days and beat him, it felt like my time had come. I opened the season and won the first three tournaments after that. The World Cup was the point where I thought my time has come.

CARNOUSTIE, SCOTLAND - JULY 20: NBC commenators Johnny Miller and Dan Hicks appear on set during the second round of the 147th Open Championship at Carnoustie Golf Club on July 20, 2018 in Carnoustie, Scotland. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images) — NBC commentators Johnny Miller and Dan Hicks appear on set during the second round of the 147th Open Championship at Carnoustie Golf Club on July 20, 2018. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

GW: Which year do you consider your best golf 1974 or 1975?

JM: 1974 was awfully good but the start of 1975, I was out-of-control good. I shot 49 under the first two weeks (Phoenix Open and Tucson Open), which is still a record. I won by 14 and by 9. I went to the practice tee at Phoenix and every shot was almost perfect. It was like what the heck is going on? It’s too bad the majors weren’t in January, February, March. My problem was I’d get bored easily. By the time the U.S. Open was over, I wanted to go fly fishing and go out on the ranch. If I had a weakness, it was that golf had a place in my life, but it wasn’t my whole life. I always liked fishing more than golf. But it was a good career.

GW: What clicked?

JM: You mean when I was winning a lot? I was just hitting the ball closer to the hole than everyone else. My iron game was really good. Every day I knew I was going to have at least two iron shots that were going to be gimmes. It’s nice to know you’re 2 under when you tee off. I was in my prime. Everyone has their prime. Nowadays, guys seem to have a three-year run and that’s pretty much it. Jordan Spieth and Jason Day, guys have these little runs – it’s still good but they lose the magic somehow. I don’t know if it is all the responsibility of being the best and the press, but part of you wants to go back to when people didn’t bother you too much. Some guys love it. Phil loves it. Arnold loved it. Billy Casper never really loved it.

GW: What golfer’s putting stroke do you wish you had?

JM: Tom Watson was the best I’d ever seen. He was uncanny. I would hit it inside of him 15 of 18 holes and he’d still beat me. He was like crazy good.

Part II of this Q&A with Johnny Miller will come to Golfweek on Tuesday.

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While quarantined, revisiting the quaint and the quirky of Open Championships gone by

Who could forget Guy McQuitty, a professional who qualified at Turnberry in ’86 then shot 95-87, a stout 42-over par for 36 holes?

In a week when we couldn’t make our way down a padlocked Magnolia Lane, homebound golf fans had to settle instead for memory lane.

Our guides were familiar broadcast voices, many of them — Pat Summerall, Ken Venturi — long stilled. Golf Channel re-aired the 1986 Masters, the Rosetta Stone of major championships that revealed the Sunday strengths of Jack Nicklaus and the comparative frailties even among Hall of Famers in the generation that followed him. Jack was winning too over on CBS, which gave us the epic ’75 Masters, in which he helped Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller add to what would ultimately be a combined seven silver salvers. More recent Masters tournaments were also dusted off: ’04, when Phil Mickelson broke his duck and Ernie Els’ heart, and ’19, when an approaching storm moved up tee times and saw Tiger Woods secure his fifth green jacket by Sunday lunchtime (his first jacket was pretty much sealed by Sunday lunchtime too, but that’s another story).

The retro weekend broadcasts — in addition to the Masters YouTube channel, which contains every final round dating back to 1968 — were a welcome fix for quarantined golf junkies who are otherwise denied until November by the COVID-19 crisis. But for me, two streams diverged in a locked down New York City apartment, and I took the one less clicked upon, at least in April. I opted for the only major tournament we know for certain won’t be played this year.

The Open Championship website has every official film since 1970 — Jack won that year too, of course — and it’s a delightful reservoir of the quaint and the quirky. In my quarantine viewing I elected to skip more recent Opens that remain reasonably fresh in the mind, despite the ample wine intake necessary to stomach small town British food those weeks. It’s earlier Opens, those from the ’70s and ’80s, that offer beguiling glimpses of a time when even major golf was less corporate, and pleasant reminders of players long forgotten because they’re either dead or just not brand-building on InstaGrift.

Like “Mr. Lu,” who lost by a shot to Lee Trevino at Royal Birkdale in ’71. Lu Liang-Huan is a mere footnote today, but he was good enough to win titles across four decades. Or Brian Barnes. The 1975 Open film opens with the late legend arriving on the beach at Carnoustie via hovercraft that ferried him across the Firth of Tay from St. Andrews (a reminder that the complete absence of hotels in Carnoustie was still preferable to the monstrosity now sitting behind the 18th green). Or Jack Newton.

He was one of two talented 25-year-olds who made an 18-hole playoff that week at Carnoustie. Tom Watson won, the first of eight majors. Newton also finished second to Seve Ballesteros in the 1980 Masters, but he’s little-remembered now, his career having been cut short at age 33 when on a rainy night he walked into a plane propeller on the runway at the Sydney airport.

Ballesteros, who would have turned 63 last week, features in so many of the old Open films, as though they were poignant home movie reminders of his brilliance. The summer of ’76, when at age 19 he chased Miller around Birkdale for four days before finishing second; the ‘car park champion’ at Lytham in ’79; the conquering matador at St. Andrews in ’84; the sublime fifth and final major back at Lytham in ’88.

Seve’s are moments not easily forgotten, but the Open films are rife with many curios that have been. Maurice Flitcroft, the unemployed crane operator who gatecrashed a qualifier in ’76 and shot 121. Guy McQuitty, a professional who qualified at Turnberry in ’86 then shot 95-87, a stout 42-over par for 36 holes. He won honorable mention in the official film for not living up to his name and hailing a cab after day one.

Greg Norman of Australia celebrates after winning the title during the final round of the 1986 British Open Golf Championship held on July 20, 1986 at Turnberry, in Ayrshire, Scotland. (Photo by Simon Bruty/Getty Images)

That same Turnberry Open saw an utterly imperious Greg Norman at the height of his powers, quite unlike the luckless figure we see so often in Masters movies. He shot what might be the finest round ever played on Friday that week, three-putting the last for a 63 in weather so foul one wouldn’t even send Brandel Chamblee outdoors in it. That was back when players routinely hit 2- and 3-irons into 450-yard holes, and fairway woods into the par-5s at Augusta National. A bygone era indeed.

That library of old Opens will get many more visits before we finally enjoy the 149th edition 15 months from now. So too will that Masters channel on YouTube, sustenance for another seven months. Sitting at home over the last week, we didn’t get to see if Tiger could defend, if Rory could complete the career grand slam, if Gary Player would boast about outdriving 80-year-old Nicklaus in the ceremonial tee shot. But we will in November, pandemic-permitting.

Until we see another major, we make do with memories. What should have been Masters week was marked by what golf has lost in 2020. But it was also an apt time to revisit everything, and everyone, that shaped and sustained it in the years thus far.