Jimmy Walker hit a nice third shot into the par-5 eighth at TPC San Antonio during the second round of the Valero Texas Open on Friday and left himself a seven-foot birdie putt.
When Golf Channel panned to Walker to show his attempt, Smylie Kaufman was hosting his ‘Happy Hour’ segment with Rory McIlroy in the guest chair. Walker took the putter back, made his stroke and was disappointed when his ball failed to fall right at the cup, leaving him a three-foot par putt behind the hole.
But then he did something Kaufman and McIlroy weren’t expecting.
After taking a step towards his ball, Walker snapped the putter head right off the shaft.
“We’ve all been there,” McIlroy said.
“I must say, of things I expected to happen just then, I don’t think I expected the club to snap in half,” Kaufman responded.
“I didn’t think Jimmy was that strong,” McIlroy joked.
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.
Spieth was great on the mic during Golf Channel’s Friday coverage.
Jordan Spieth is never quiet on the golf course.
He’s known for talking to himself and his caddie, Michael Greller, plenty during a round, often providing entertaining commentary. On Friday during Golf Channel’s telecast of the 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club & Lodge, Spieth put on a headset and joined Smylie Kaufman for “Happy Hour” near the 16th green to call golf for more than half an hour.
Spieth, who sits 1 under through 36 holes, talked about myriad topics, including angles, shots players faced and his shenanigans with Kaufman and fellow buddies Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler.
However, his best moment came when the camera switched to world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler chipping for eagle on the par-5 12th hole.
“I’d take a chance on this one scaring the hole,” Spieth says as Scheffler takes his strike, copying former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, who especially early in his broadcasting career for CBS made predictions that came true.
Announcers openly booing players? Acceptable at the WM Phoenix Open.
And there were no shortage of boos Saturday afternoon and evening at TPC Scottsdale, especially on the 16th tee box. The rowdiest hole in golf is known for good shots being praised and bad ones being ridiculed.
But the announcers getting in on the fanfare? That’s what Smylie Kaufman and Kevin Kisner did on Saturday’s broadcast. NBC Sports set the duo up a few yards from the 16th tee box, and from the first tee shot, they provided a different type of commentary than we’ve seen from an NBC broadcast in some time.
Sure, Colt Knost and Amanda Renner have set up shop on this hole in previous years and done a stellar job, but with the CBS crew having the week off thanks to the Super Bowl, it was NBC’s time to showcase something new.
They may have struck gold.
Fans chimed in on social media in support of the duo and their non-stop debauchery from the 16th tee. Kisner even had a football he would pass to players for them to toss into the crowd, but the duo didn’t hold back commentating on the golf.
They praised good shots and boo’ed bad ones. They were clearly having fun, and the excitement of the 16th hole truly came through on the broadcast.
Kevin Kisner and Smylie Kaufman on the 16th tee box. (Photo: NBC Sports)
Here’s some of the best reactions to the duo making their debut from the tee box.
Seven years ago, Smylie Kaufman and Jordan Spieth had a rough time on a kayak in the Pacific Ocean.
Following their first round of play in the 2017 Sony Open in Hawaii, the duo took a kayak out on the water near Waialae Country Club in Honolulu to do some fishing. However, the waves had a different idea.
There’s some epic video of the two being tossed around, losing a lot of the gear and personal items they had on the kayak. Nevertheless, they were laughing the whole time and it made for incredible footage.
On Friday during the second round of the 2024 Sony Open in Hawaii, Kaufman had his chance at redemption. He got back into a kayak, with a microphone in hand on the Golf Channel during live coverage, and called golf shots on the par-3 17th, which runs next to the ocean.
Gary Woodland is making his return to the PGA Tour this week at the Sony Open in Hawaii. On Sept. 18 of last year, Woodland announced via his social media account that he underwent surgery to remove a tumor from his brain.
“I had gone four and a half months of every day really thinking I was going to die,” he said during his pre-tournament press conference Tuesday at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu. “Every day it was a new way of dying, new way of death. The jolting in the middle of the night scared the heck out of me.”
The Tour’s Twitter/X account posted a video of Woodland’s press conference, and various pros, media members and fans responded with words of encouragement and support.
Kisner joined Smylie Kaufman’s podcast to detail his first broadcast appearance and had some great stories to tell.
NBC’s lead golf producer Tommy Roy has been interested in Kevin Kisner as a broadcaster for some time and told him the opportunity was available whenever the fan-favorite was ready to quit playing.
After a quiet fall, Roy approached Kisner at Sea Island in Georgia and called him a week later to get his schedule so they could find a time for Kisner to try out on the mic.
“I was like, ‘Well, I’m going to Honolulu to play so I can do Maui,’” said Kisner. “(Roy’s) like, ‘Alright, perfect. I’ll see you there.’ I was like, what? Next day I know I’m talking to a guy about a contract.”
The four-time PGA Tour winner made his first of two appearances for NBC and Golf Channel at last week’s PGA Tour opener, The Sentry, and received rave reviews from media and fans. Kisner, 39, will also be on the call for the WM Phoenix Open later this year. Before making his first start of the new Tour season at the Sony Open in Hawaii this week, Kisner joined fellow player-turned-commentator Smylie Kaufman on his podcast to talk about his broadcast debut.
Kisner said he called his wife because he didn’t think he could do the job after watching what happened behind the scenes for an hour during Thursday’s first round but stuck it out and joined the broadcast on Friday. He was funny, told great stories about the players and brought a new element to a broadcast that has grown stale over the last few years.
“From what I heard, having a guy that’s been in there close with the guys recently, it helped. I’ve got stories on all of them because I’ve been around, now some of these young guys I don’t have any stories on,” Kisner said. “If (Akshay Bhatia) went and got hot (Sunday), I’d have probably just sat there twiddling my thumbs the whole day. I don’t have any dirt on him yet. But it was nice to have some of the guys I know well rolling and that I could pull from my old memory bank.”
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.
“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.
Faxon, an eight-time winner on the PGA Tour, will be a hole announcer and contributor for NBC Sports’ studio coverage and will debut next month at the Honda Classic. Kaufman, also a winner on Tour, will join Notah Begay III, Arron Oberholser and John Wood as an on-course reporter. The network also announced that Curt Byrum will serve as an announcer, taking the place of fan-favorite David Feherty, who left to work for LIV Golf.
“We have the deepest roster in the game and are excited to showcase our new voices in Brad and Smylie as well as familiar faces in new roles as we start the 2023 PGA Tour season this week at Kapalua,” said Molly Solomon, Golf Channel’s executive producer.
Maltbie, 71, and Koch, 70, were told the network wanted to “refresh” its team. Meanwhile, Golf.com has reported Mark Rolfing, 73, has re-upped with the network with a multi-year deal that begins this week at the Sentry Tournament of Champions.
Damon Hack and Cara Banks will be reporters for tournament coverage while Dan Hicks and Paul Azinger will return to their respective play-by-play and lead analyst roles for a fifth consecutive year.
