The post What Amazon Prime has in store for its Masters streaming coverage appeared first on Golf.

The post What Amazon Prime has in store for its Masters streaming coverage appeared first on Golf.

New television partners arrive at Augusta National about as frequently as the United States embarks upon visits to the moon.

In 2026, CBS will celebrate its 71st year broadcasting golf’s first major; ESPN will celebrate its 19th; and a new upstart (and global streaming giant/part of the largest company in the United States) named Amazon Prime will celebrate its first Masters telecast.

By those metrics, Amazon Prime’s addition to the Masters broadcast field for 2026 counts as a news story in its own right. But the streamer’s plans for 2026? Well, those are equally newsworthy, and on Wednesday morning, we received our first glimpse into them.

According to a release distributed by the Masters, Prime Video will broadcast from 1-3 p.m. ET on Thursday and Friday leading into ESPN’s eventual coverage of the opening two rounds.

In addition, Prime will offer a first-of-its-kind stats-based broadcast named Inside Amen Corner, a dedicated feed on Prime Video that will aim to take diehard fans deeper into the action and strategy for the most famous three holes on property at Augusta National — Nos. 11, 12 and 13. Based on the press release’s description, Inside Amen Corner appears to be Prime’s attempt to mimic the “Prime Vision” broadcast that has grown a sincere affection among Thursday Night Football diehards for its endlessly nerdy, delightfully in-depth coverage of the nuances of football. Coverage of Inside Amen Corner will air from 10:45 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET on all four days of the tournament on Prime Video.

Altogether, the changes amount to a new kind of upgrade for the Masters on TV, reflecting the tournament’s ever-evolving mindset toward television and entertainment. For years, Augusta National has existed in a state of superposition: at once broadcasting a classic, timeless look highlighted by limited commercial interruption and now heading full speed into the tech-driven future with a best-in-class app and a full slate of deeply nerdy gadgets and gizmos. The Amazon Prime deal is a reflection of that very same tension, too: Prime’s inclusion at the Masters will bring the tournament to a major streamer for the first time since the start of the cord-cutting phenomenon, but also provides many of the same prestige brand-and-production bonafides that Augusta seeks in each of its major network partners. Even the Amen Corner-dedicated stream reflects the same tension, with a blazing, first-of-its-kind, diehards-only telecast to balance against the more traditional broadcast stream expected of Amazon’s early Thursday and Friday coverage. In all locations and in all ways, the Prime deal aims to prove that the Masters can exist exactly as it has for nine decades … while never staying in one place.

In all, the new Masters partner will exist exactly in the space Augusta National enjoys most of its media offerings: Additive but not suffocating. For those who can’t get enough of the coverage from the ground at Augusta National during the second week in April, that’s certainly not bad news.

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The post 7 noticeable changes arrive to LPGA broadcasts in 2026 appeared first on Golf.

If you’re in the business of sports, you’re really in the business of media — and golf needs to look no further than its newest leadership class to know that is true.

On the PGA Tour, the leader of the flock is Brian Rolapp, Roger Goodell’s former right-hand man at the NFL and the previous head of the league’s prolific media rights business, which made up nearly 60 percent of its $23 billion in 2025 revenue. On the LPGA, the leader is an executive of less rarefied TV bonafides, but with no less commitment to the power of media.

The leader’s name is Craig Kessler, who joined the LPGA a little less than a year ago and has spent the better part of the last 12 months totally reinventing the way the LPGA approaches its audience. At last weekend’s Founders Cup, Kessler’s LPGA unveiled a new series of TV enhancements meant to take those dreams to the next level. The seven biggest of those shifts are listed below.

7 LPGA broadcast enhancements for 2026

1. More hours!!

The biggest shift on TV for the LPGA in 2026 was unveiled long before the Founders Cup, but it bears repeating: Thanks to a partnership with FM, every single round of every single LPGA event in 2026 will feature live TV coverage for the first time ever.

The big expansion in TV hours means the LPGA will have more opportunities for coverage, more eyeballs when its events are in session, and an easier path to impact with the golf audience, which won’t need to jump through hoops to tune into the action.

For years, Rolapp’s NFL playbook involved a strategy of “reach” — or doing everything possible to maximize the number of eyeballs watching each week, even if it came at the expense of a few TV dollars along the way. Kessler is doubling down on that strategy.

2. More cameras

Of course, any expansion to LPGA broadcast hours comes with a handful of expansions to LPGA broadcast equipment. In this case, the cameras are receiving the biggest upgrade, with a 50-percent increase in camera equipment for 2026.

3. More TV goodies

All the tiny details that help add texture and detail to a typical golf broadcast will also be receiving a boost in 2026, including the LPGA’s microphones and slow-motion camera capabilities, each of which received an upgrade in the new year.

4. More drones!

Perhaps the most noticeable visual shift from last year to this one occurred not on the course but in the skies, where an expanded fleet of drones captured a series of dynamic new images during the course of competition.

Drone photography has become a staple of men’s golf broadcasts over the last several years, and improvements in technology have brought down costs and expanded possibilities for broadcast teams. LPGA and Golf Channel investment to these ends shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s certainly a no-brainer.

5. Shot tracer enhancements

The largest increase between ’25 and ’26 for the LPGA arrived in the graphics department, where the Tour 4x’d its output in shot tracing capabilities thanks to an expanded partnership with TrackMan.

6. Feature storytelling

One way to ensure that your best players’ stories are told? Tell ’em yourself!

The LPGA invested considerably in a series of features-driven programming for 2026 that will run during tournament broadcasts. The first iteration of those features — a look into Rose Zhang’s continuing education at Stanford — was told during Founders weekend.

7. Expanded player access

Another way to ensure that your best players’ stories are told? Have them tell the stories!

The LPGA is expanding its walk-and-talk efforts during the 2026 season as part of Kessler’s efforts to make the LPGA’s most noticeable faces and names more accessible and more prominent. Some of that expansion has happened already on social media, but more will come during tournament broadcasts, mirroring the advancements in the walk-and-talk format in the men’s game.

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Rory McIlroy will have the chance to tell his Masters story once and for all — and he’ll have a national audience to share it with.

On Wednesday morning, Amazon Prime announced Rory McIlroy: The Masters Wait, a brand-new documentary film project that will be released on March 30, just days before McIlroy returns to Augusta National for the first time as champion.

While McIlroy’s media presence has spiked in the aftermath of his globe-stopping victory at Augusta National, the Grand Slam winner has yet to sit for the kind of tell-all interview typical for a sporting event of its significance. The Masters Wait appears to be McIlroy’s effort at accomplishing that goal, while also maintaining some level of editorial input through his production company, Firethorn, which is listed as a co-producer in the film’s press release.

A trailer released for the new project shows McIlroy’s career through the lens of the Masters, beginning with his infamous collapse in 2011 and continuing through to his eventual Grand Slam triumph in 2025. McIlroy is the only interviewee shown in the trailer, which also includes an impressive array of cinema-quality footage from his final round last April.

Amazon Prime received the distribution rights for the project, which will serve as original content for the streamer in addition to its brand-new broadcast deal with Augusta National. Prime will carry coverage of the Masters for the first time in 2026, adding two hours of early-week tournament TV coverage to the tournament’s current TV cornucopia and giving the Masters a full-fledged streaming partner for the first time in tournament history.

The new project is also being produced by “Everyone Else,” the production company responsible for the Oscar-winning 2011 documentary Undefeated, which followed the Manassas Tigers high school football team in Memphis. Drea Cooper, who has worked with Everyone Else on a series of documentary projects, has been tabbed as the project’s director.

Beyond the March 30 release date, the press release didn’t specify the release time or film length. You can watch the full teaser trailer for the movie below.

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CBS’s long-running partnership with the Masters (rightfully) earns the plaudits as golf TV’s most prominent handshake agreement, but it’s certainly not the only one.

NBC’s partnership with the Ryder Cup has lasted three decades, and on Monday afternoon, the network and the PGA of America announced it would continue into a fourth, announcing a media rights extension that will carry through the 2033 Ryder Cup at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.

The partnership extension — which included an associated agreement with USA Sports, the current owners/operators of Golf Channel — prolongs the PGA of America’s long-term partnership with NBC, the network which played a considerable role in building out the Ryder Cup from one of golf’s proudest exhibitions into a commercial and economic behemoth capable of sustaining two of golf’s largest governing bodies, the PGA of America and the DP World Tour.

Few golf fans know that the Ryder Cup owes a debt of gratitude to golf’s friends at Major League Baseball, and its network partners at NBC, for infusing a jolt of energy and financial viability into the event. After all, it was former MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti who opened the door for the Ryder Cup on NBC by splitting from the network in the winter of 1988 — and it was NBC who seized the newfound window of opportunity by signing a shrewd agreement with the Ryder Cup in 1990, paving the way for the famed War by the Shore to capture the hearts and minds of golf fans nationwide, dramatically expanding the economic impact of the Cup in the process.

As GOLF.com first profiled back in 2023, an up-and-comer in Dick Ebersol’s NBC Sports department was the first network executive to see the potential in the Ryder Cup as a TV venture. His name was Jon Miller, and he intuited an opportunity in NBC’s golf coverage. At the time, the network had lots of PGA Tour telecasts, but no major championships. While the Ryder Cup wasn’t a “major” in the traditional sense, it provided many of the components that made for compelling golf (and sports) television: two heated rivals, a pesky group of American underdogs, and a vaunted collection of European villains who’d won three straight editions of the Cup.

The Cup also had something compelling for NBC: a dearth of traditional TV partners capable of NBC’s broad cultural impact. The potential partnership was beneficial on both sides of the negotiating table: a new TV property for Ebersol’s (suddenly beleaguered) sports department, and a new TV partner for the PGA of America.

Ebersol loved Miller’s idea, and before long the contract was in ink. When the American side won in dramatic fashion the following fall at Kiawah Island, the Cup was a sports sensation, and NBC’s agreement went from ink to stone.

While NBC’s domain over the Cup might not be considered as ironclad or as vast as CBS’s with the Masters (which will enter a seventh decade in 2026), the network and the PGA of America have maintained a close relationship in the decades since that first Ryder Cup. While the rights to the Ryder Cup could go anywhere — especially as a one-off event with huge commercial potential — it is a testament to the strength of the relationship and the residual goodwill from that first leap in 1990 that NBC remains the partner of choice.

For NBC, the announcement provides an interesting window into the latest shape of the network’s golf partnerships, which have come under increased scrutiny as Peacock continues to add sports programming by the truckload. NBC’s growth strategy in the age of streaming appears to be predicated upon the strength of sports TV rights, which have proven to be one of the few consistent vectors of attention in an increasingly fractured media economy — and the explosion of new rights to NBC (including, ironically, the return of Major League Baseball) has led some to question the long-term viability of golf on the network.

The PGA of America deal will give NBC the rights to the Cup through 2033, extending a year beyond NBC’s existing deal with the USGA, which will provide U.S. Open coverage through 2032, and three years beyond the network’s existing deal with the PGA Tour, which ends in 2030.

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The post Golf Channel hires surprise new lead analyst for PGA Tour coverage appeared first on Golf.

The post Golf Channel hires surprise new lead analyst for PGA Tour coverage appeared first on Golf.

If you spend any time at all around golf’s crop of TV analysts, you realize something unusual: By the letter of the law, almost none of them are qualified.

The reason for this is not broadcast training or golf skill, but something much simpler. In the history of golf television, there have been only a handful of so-called “Lead Analysts” — the talking heads atop each network’s broadcast — and all but one of them have been major championship winners.

On Wednesday morning, that group added a surprise new voice to the mix: Jim Furyk, who will call two PGA Tour events on the Florida swing — the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship — in the lead analyst chair for Golf Channel.

The 55-year-old U.S. Open winner and former Ryder Cup captain is no stranger to life inside the ropes. Over the past several years, he’s been a fixture on the PGA Tour Champions, winning the Tour’s rookie of the year award in 2021 and hosting an annual Champions Tour event through his charity, Furyk and Friends. His TV and radio history is less thorough, though he has been no stranger to media scrums in his three decades and 17 victories on the PGA Tour — and has served as a frequent guest on SiriusXM throughout the years.

“It’s probably on a trial basis, see how much I like it, get a feel for it,” Furyk told the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson. “With any new endeavor, it’s a learning process. There’s a feel and flow for how the show is done. I’m focused on doing the best job for two weeks.”

The 17-time PGA Tour winner may not have a preponderance of TV experience, but he does have a deep well of professional experience to lean on. He has competed as a pro for more than three decades, and enters the Players Championship with five top-5 finishes in the event, including two runner-up finishes, most recently as an out-of-nowhere 48-year-old in 2019. Furyk never won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, but he was just the third pro ever (following Palmer and Bruce Fleisher) to win his first two starts on the Champions Tour.

It’s early to forecast exactly what the tryout period means for Furyk’s TV future (in large part because he does not currently have a TV past to speak of), but he enters the job with something every fellow golf analyst craves: his 2003 victory at the U.S. Open at Olympia Fields. While Furyk might ultimately choose not to pursue a pathway to a lead analyst role with any of golf’s major networks, the major championship pedigree provides him with a potential pathway to a lead analyst chair that, until NBC’s Kevin Kisner, had only ever been occupied by major championship winners.

Ironically, Kisner’s path to the lead chair at NBC could provide clues for Furyk as he tries to navigate the journey forward. Kisner was a full-time PGA Tour player when he first stepped into NBC’s “tryout” to replace Paul Azinger in the lead analyst chair, then spent a year flirting with the job on a part-time basis before being named Azinger’s permanent replacement at the end of 2024.

Kisner was a cool customer from the beginning at NBC, but he proved it was possible to grow on the job en route to something bigger. For now, that’s not on Furyk’s radar — but by the end of March, he could be singing a very different tune.

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The post 5 noticeable changes on CBS Golf TV broadcasts in 2026 appeared first on Golf.

The post 5 noticeable changes on CBS Golf TV broadcasts in 2026 appeared first on Golf.

You did not have to be a particularly skilled TV watcher to notice the most significant shift in the CBS Golf booth during the network’s coverage of the PGA Tour’s “West Coast Swing” — but you did have to be a persistent one.

The most noticeable shift of the 2026 golf season for CBS arrived at Pebble Beach late on Sunday evening, after winner Collin Morikawa had vanished into the bliss of his first victory on U.S. soil in nearly five years — and after Morikawa’s caddie Matt Urbanek had disappeared into the night with the 18th hole flag at Pebble Beach. It arrived 50 yards off the side of the 18th fairway, down a craggly outcropping of rocks and on a beach facing a steadily rising tide.

The shift’s name was Johnson Wagner, CBS Golf’s newest on-course reporter, who’d arrived to reprise his role as golf’s preeminent stunt-double. And as he surveyed the shot from the side of 18 that had delayed the end of the golf tournament for upwards of 20 minutes, the high-velocity hum of the CBS Golf broadcast stalled into a vacuum of anticipatory silence.

News

With a 50-degree wedge plucked from his bag, Wagner settled his feet, steadied his grip and swung. And with that swing, we start our look into the biggest changes on CBS in 2026 — starting with the guy whose on-course heroics have taken a new tune …

5 noticeable CBS Golf changes in 2026

5. Johnson Wagner

Wagner’s addition to the CBS Golf team is, in fact, much bigger than on-course hijinks — though he earned quite a reputation for those in his time with Golf Channel and NBC. In his day job with CBS, Wagner will be the network’s third “walking reporter,” behind ace walkers Dottie Pepper and Mark Immelman. But he will moonlight doing the kind of segments that have become a golf staple over the last several years: Leaning into his experience as a pro golfer for more than two decades to recreate the biggest shots and moments of the day himself, giving fans a deeper look into their difficulty and nuance.

Wagner and CBS are still working out the particulars of those segments and how they fit into the network’s broadcasts, but they’ve already yielded plenty of entertainment. (For example, after hitting his shot from the beach, Wagner was given thirty seconds to scale the rocks at Pebble Beach before CBS cut to a break. He made it safely with five seconds to spare.)

As the new season progresses, expect Wagner’s role to expand in kind.

4. Colt Knost moves upstairs

Colt Knost’s promotion to a spot in the CBS “super tower” precipitated Wagner’s hiring at CBS — a promotion itself precipitated by longtime analyst Ian Baker-Finch’s retirement from the CBS booth after more than two decades in TV.

Knost received the call to the bullpen to fill Baker-Finch’s seat, and though there’s no replacing Baker-Finch’s role in the CBS broadcast, Knost has already brought some of his own spin to the booth. He’ll play a vital role for CBS next to fellow analysts Frank Nobilo and Trevor Immelman, and alongside play-by-play man Jim Nantz.

3. New Drones!

The PGA Tour and CBS earned an Emmy last year for the latest expansion in drone camerawork, a new technology named “Drone AR.” The new drone added a shot tracer to CBS’s existing drone complement, allowing the network to showcase tee and approach shots in a three-dimensional axis. It was immediately popular, and quickly followed up by the “shot tracer probability” lines, which leaned on the Tour’s expansive ShotLink database to predict the outcome of a tee shot (green for good, red for bad!).

In 2026, those animations are receiving another upgrade, adding analytics to the Drone AR that help explain player tendencies, course strategy and shot intent. If you were watching at Pebble Beach, you saw the first instances of these upgrades in action — though more are expected (on each of the Tour’s network broadcasts) over the course of the 2026 season.

2. B-2 Broadcast Graphics

If you were watching closely, you might have seen golf’s version of the B-2 bomber flying over the skies of Pebble Beach, Phoenix or Riviera over the last several weeks.

No, not an actual B-2 (though that would be inarguably sick) — but rather the PGA Tour’s new “Weather Applied Metrics”, which help visualize the impact of changing weather conditions by turning the invisible forces of airflow into fully visible, computer-generated graphics.

We’ve seen versions of the “Weather Applied Metrics” utilized in Tour broadcasts in the past, most notably around the 17th tee box at the Players Championship. But this new version of the technology is more robust and comprehensive than previous iterations, showcasing changes in wind, temperature and humidity to help viewers understand the changes each week.

1. A new schedule

Golf fans have witnessed the Tour’s shape-shifting schedule from up close in 2026, with The Sentry’s late cancellation in Maui and the return of the Cadillac Championship at Doral as part of March’s Florida Swing.

Those changes have had downstream effects on the Tour’s broadcasters, which have jockeyed their 2026 television schedules to accommodate the shifts. First, CBS will scoop the Cadillac from Doral, picking up a tournament at a venue where the network holds a half-century of broadcasting history. In exchange for that addition (and NBC’s loss of the Sentry), CBS will trade the Travelers Championship to NBC, helping to even out the regular-season Tour schedule.

There’s also a change on the PGA Tour’s postseason broadcast schedule. As part of the every-other-year cadence of the Tour’s broadcast rights, CBS will pick up this year’s FedEx Cup Playoffs, with coverage continuing through the Tour Championship at the end of August.

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The post 5 reasons for golf’s colossal TV ratings jump to start 2026 season appeared first on Golf.

Good news first.

The latest numbers for golf television are up big-time. Like, significantly-larger-than-expected, big-time. The 2026 American Express, won by Scottie Scheffler in his first start of the new year? That averaged 515,000 viewers for the weekend on Golf Channel — up more than 125 percent over 2025, including a 281 percent jump during Saturday’s third round (which, graciously, was not forced to compete with the AFC and NFC Championship games.)

The 2026 Farmers Insurance Open, won by Justin Rose in a blowout? That averaged 2.9 million viewers on CBS, the best finish from Torrey Pines in six years for the PGA Tour, and an increase of nearly 70 percent over last year’s final round. And the interest in Brooks Koepka’s big PGA Tour return wasn’t half-bad either — with Thursday and Friday’s opening rounds generating gains of 87 and 115 percent, respectively, on Golf Channel, and ESPN signing on to carry early day coverage of the opening two rounds on their cable network.

These are big, big numbers, but are they a sign of things to come? It’s early to say, especially with the previous week’s Sony Open TV final-round numbers coming in at just 106,000 average viewers, or roughly one-third of the year prior. But, like most golf TV ratings, it helps to add a dose of context. So, let’s examine the reasons for golf’s big start to 2026.

1. Scheduling

It’s probably a good idea for us to start with the most obvious qualifier for the ratings jumps: Scheduling. Notably, this year’s Farmers Insurance Open aired in its traditional Thursday-to-Sunday spot, ending a several-year experiment in the Wednesday to Saturday slot to accommodate CBS’s broadcast of the AFC Championship Game.

The shift back to the traditional weekend schedule always figured to result in bigger ratings for Torrey, which never quite caught on in the new timeslot despite earning praise for its flexibility. The Tour’s decision to move the event to the weekend after the conference championship games helped, too. Without any football competing with the Farmers, Torrey Pines earned a full weekend of national TV spotlight, and the event quickly showed why so many golf fans have come to adore it on the calendar.

2. Nielsen

If the NFL is any indication, it’s likely we’ll see all ratings up this year in pro golf, as the majority of the sports world shifts from the traditional Nielsen “panel” methodology to the new Nielsen “Big Data + Panel” methodology. The new “Big Data” panel, which incorporates better out-of-home viewing and attempts to capture a share of those watching on Smart TVs, aims to reflect a more representative sample of the TV-watching audience than Nielsen’s traditional device-driven method. But so far, the effect of Big Data has been bigger numbers for nearly everybody in the sports industry, including the NFL, which was up by about 10 percent over 2025.

For golf, the boosts could be even more significant. In the eyes of many golf television executives, the sport has long been underrepresented in Nielsen’s ratings thanks to its older, more affluent audience (which might be less inclined to place a traditional Nielsen “device” inside their living room). Now, with Big Data, many executives are theorizing the golf audience can be captured more effectively, leading to bigger gains. Again, it’s early, but this could be a big factor.

3. Scottie Scheffler

Strange as it sounds, the back half of the 2025 season showed real signals that Scheffler could be entering rarefied air among golfers … and not just for his win percentage. Scheffler’s wins at the PGA Championship and Open Championship delivered big audiences to golf — despite neither resulting in a particularly thrilling finish — a sign that Scheffler’s dominance was starting to seep in with a more casual sports audience.

His win at the American Express reflected more of the same: A blowout victory running directly against the NFL’s conference championship matchups … and yet many golf fans stopped what they were doing to tune in to his rout. There’s not enough evidence to call Scheffler a one-man needle-mover … yet. But we might not be as far from that reality as it seems.

4. Brooks Koepka

Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour was a big story. It was also, critically, an early-week story. Both things helped the end-of-week ratings, even if some golf fans were peeved by how much they saw of Koepka on the weekend despite the wide distance between him and the lead.

Golf fans curious to see Koepka’s return to golf might have been sucked into Thursday or Friday’s coverage, which might have had a downstream effect on Saturday and Sunday. It’s certainly a stretch to suggest Koepka’s (or later, Patrick Reed’s) return to the Tour will provide a bump for more than a week, but you can bet the Tour will take every eyeball.

5. Coherence!

It’s become almost cliche to talk about the PGA Tour’s big goals for the future — fewer events, greater significance, more coherence to the golf calendar. But here there might actually be the first signs of life. The West Coast swing has felt decidedly juicier than in years’ past, a change owed to a calendar that seems to flow more coherently … with events condensed into a more predictable window.

Consider the Amex, which might not typically draw a big audience or big headlines. Sure, it was helped by Scheffler winning, but his win only happened because he was in the field, and he was only in the field because an early season flight to Kapalua was nixed from the calendar. Same goes for Torrey, which didn’t benefit from nearly as many stars in attendance, but benefited from the Tour’s emphasis on coherence just the same. Thanks to the creation of an eleventh-hour rules loophole, Koepka was able to reenter the Tour immediately. And because he was able to reenter immediately, he was one of the biggest names and faces in an otherwise softer field.

It might not seem like much, but these are the decisions that alter TV ratings. So far, the Tour is batting nearly a thousand.

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Every so often, a TV talent announces themself to the world so clearly and obviously that the whole industry rises to meet them.

Job offers fly out of the trees. Networks open their checkbooks. Fans follow the star’s next move with bated breath.

This is not one of those stories.

There are many ways of understanding Johnson Wagner’s meteoric rise in golf from fringe pro to walking reporter for CBS, his new employers beginning this week at Torrey Pines. But perhaps the best way is to acknowledge Wagner for who he is: One of sports TV’s truest underdogs.

Wagner was not a social media celebrity when he was hired part-time at Golf Channel in 2022. He did not have a litany of major championship successes or a long history of compelling podcast interviews. Most weeks during his playing career, the most attention he generated was mild fascination with the jeans-brand phonetics of his name.

The anonymity wasn’t a dealbreaker for the network or the broadcaster. Golf Channel knew Wagner’s reputation as one of golf’s most affable pros. And, at 42 years old, Wagner wasn’t deluded about the “weight” of his “celebrity” after two decades and a handful of wins on the PGA Tour. He wanted only a shot to prove himself.

“My goal was to say yes to everything,” Wagner says. “I just wanted to be as useful and as productive as possible.”

The levity helped. Wagner’s first few days at Golf Channel were a challenge. He was uncomfortable in front of the camera. His analysis was placid and flat. He felt like he was struggling just to get the words out.

He was hardly the first. Many — if not most — athletes-turned-broadcasters struggle in the early days of a career in front of the camera. It makes sense: The subject matter might be familiar, but the discipline is new and the terrain is foreign. It’s generally hard to be humbled, but it’s harder when you’ve spent the vast majority of your life among the best in the world at your chosen profession. To confront both of those realities while standing before a national television audience? Well, it’s not hard to understand why so many athletes find retired life appealing after a year at the network.

Wagner wishes he could say he was undaunted by the early struggles — that his instincts as an entertainer took over without any coaxing — but that would be a lie. He survived those first few days not because he was better, but because he was willing to admit that he wasn’t. As he tried to gain his footing, he reached out to the TV pros around him (and beneath him) with an unusually candid question: Any advice?

“It was the day I fell in love with TV, and it was my third day at Golf Channel,” Wagner says, recalling the pep talk from a segment producer named Harris Chang that changed everything.

“We went out to dinner last night, we had a beer and we talked golf — that’s who we want to come across on air,” Chang told Wagner. “I don’t know if you’re trying to act like Brandel [Chamblee], but we just want you to be yourself.”

Wagner might have been within his rights to ignore such candid feedback from someone beneath him on the TV food chain. Instead, he thanked him.

“I took it to heart,” Wagner said.

It was a seminal moment for Wagner as a TV broadcaster, but maybe not in the way he thought. From that day forward, Wagner had earned a reputation as a consummate teammate — the kind of broadcaster who would go anywhere, tackle any assignment and handle any challenge with good humor. Across the industry, people noticed.

“I think what he brought out of his playing days into his broadcasting days was an element of vulnerability,” says Dottie Pepper, Wagner’s new teammate (and CBS’s lead walking reporter). “He did struggle with parts of the game and he never hid behind it. I think that’s going to be super valuable.”

Features

For a long time, Wagner’s growth manifested quietly. Occasionally, fans or fellow Tour pros stopped him to share positive feedback (or, more frequently, admiration for his mustache).

Eventually, people caught on. Wagner’s voice was thoughtful and his analysis was studied and sincere. His teammates liked working with him. His bosses at Golf Channel were pushing him into larger roles.

Those tiny moments boiled over in the spring of 2024, when Golf Channel encouraged Wagner to try a new segment on Live From, recreating the most important moment of each day. (Years earlier, the idea had originated, to some success, with one of Wagner’s golf heroes — and now a CBS teammate — Frank Nobilo.)

The conceit was that Wagner’s analysis would take fans deeper into the difficulty of tournament golf shots and the skill level required to execute them, but the outcome wound up looking a lot like Bill Murray’s joke that every Olympic competition should include a normal person for reference. Wagner stepped in front of the camera looking serious and focused … and then he shanked a wedge shot. And then another. And then another. Until he’d flubbed so many that not even he could withhold his laughter. The video generated significant viral traction.

A few days later, Wagner was back in action after a curious Rory McIlroy drop. He nearly threw out his shoulder crow-hopping a golf ball into the side of a hill to recreate the situation. Another social media clip, another viral video. Then came the weekend. Another shank. More virality.

By the time he arrived at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst two months later, Wagner was a celebrity. By the end of the week — and after bettering Bryson DeChambeau’s heroic, tournament-winning bunker shot late on Sunday evening — he was a folk hero. The TV industry took notice. At long last, Wagner was on the up-and-up … and ready for it.

“There were moments in my playing career where I maybe got a little lazy, when things felt easy. So when I started out with TV, I wanted to climb as high as I possibly could,” Wagner says. “I know I don’t have the credentials to be a Johnny Miller or Trevor Immelman. But I want to be the best that I can be.”

Of course, the irony is that Wagner’s everyman credentials are essential to his viral success. The mishaps have arrived organically, but they are funny only because Wagner isn’t a major champion. Without Wagner’s sense of self, his segments might have welcomed cringes rather than chuckles. His relatability is his essence.

“He’s shown vulnerability in his Live From segments, [he showed it] reaching out for help when he first got into broadcasting,” Pepper says. “Vulnerability will be key as he continues to try to keep that polish going, because he’s gotten better, and better and better.”

In the end, the climax of Wagner’s TV underdog story wasn’t exactly Rudy. Ian Baker-Finch was retiring from his position in the CBS Golf booth, and Colt Knost was moving upstairs to replace him. That left a spot on CBS Golf’s team as the third walking reporter behind Pepper and Mark Immelman. Though Wagner had only been a walking reporter a handful of times at Golf Channel and NBC, CBS was interested in what they’d heard and seen. An offer arrived, and Wagner accepted.

“I still can’t believe it,” Wagner says now. “Three years ago, I was starting in TV. Now I’m with CBS. It’s unbelievable.”

Fear not, golf fans — as part of his job with CBS, Wagner will be bringing his Live From segments with him. He says the exact dimensions of those efforts are still taking shape, but their importance in Wagner’s promotion is hard to ignore.

“If it weren’t for my role on Live From, I don’t think there was any way that I would have been considered for this job,” Wagner admits. “It’s definitely made me who I am in broadcasting, and interacting with fans at major championships, it’s shocking that they know who I am and that they love watching me.”

Shocking to him maybe, but not to everyone else. If you want to know what makes Wagner a fit for this promotion — and for the jobs that will come after it — you don’t need to understand broadcast nuance or on-air skill.

Only a far more human superpower: humility.

“I have to prove myself,” He says. “I don’t want to get complacent in a role and think, I’m too good for this, or I’m too good for that. To start at the beginning again with a new station, with a new company — that’s what keeps me motivated right now.”

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The post ESPN to air PGA Tour for first time in 2 decades — here’s why appeared first on Golf.

The post ESPN to air PGA Tour for first time in 2 decades — here’s why appeared first on Golf.

PGA Tour golf is coming back to the worldwide leader’s main channel.

On Monday morning, the PGA Tour announced that first and second round coverage from this week’s Farmers Insurance Open will be aired on ESPN’s linear cable network in addition to the Tour’s typical broadcasts on ESPN+, Golf Channel and CBS.

The announcement makes the Farmers Insurance Open the first golf tournament to air on ESPN in nearly two decades and opens the door for the Tour to expand its televised hours on one of America’s largest and most influential cable networks. It also juices the audience and reach for one of the most highly anticipated PGA Tour appearances in some time: five-time major champion Brooks Koepka’s return after nearly four seasons with LIV Golf.

According to a person with knowledge of the Tour/ESPN agreement, the broadcast “expansion” to ESPN’s cable channels is not a new agreement between the two parties, and will not reap the Tour an additional rights fee. Rather, the move is a one-week “test” in addition to the Tour’s outstanding ESPN+ agreement. The ESPN broadcast will be a simulcast of the ESPN+ feed, will go off the air before Golf Channel’s broadcast kicks in each evening, and is currently scheduled only to cover this week’s Farmers Insurance Open, though both sides could work to find a pathway to make the relationship a more permanent arrangement, should all go according to plan.

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In other words, the money will stay the same, but the audience reach will dramatically increase for the Tour — a strategy that fits in line with new Tour CEO Brian Rolapp’s grander views about live sports. In his previous job at the NFL, Rolapp spearheaded an NFL media strategy that obsessed over reach and consequence, sometimes at the expense of money — an approach rooted in the theory that a large, captive audience was the key to world dominance.

Historically, the Tour has taken a slightly more restrictive view of its media rights, reaping as much value as possible for every second of live action sold. The ESPN tryout flies in the face of that belief, though it does present a win-win upside for the Tour and ESPN: The Tour can claim better ratings and a larger share of viewership during an early-week window when it otherwise wouldn’t be on TV; and ESPN can claim some free programming to fill its airwaves … with the added benefit of showcasing Brooks Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour exclusively.

Officially, the event is the first for the Tour on ESPN since the network ended its relationship with the Tour after the WGC-Barbados World Cup in 2006. Golf Channel has covered the majority of the PGA Tour’s early-week coverage in recent years, though ESPN reentered the pool of Tour broadcast partners at the turn of the decade when it signed an agreement to carry early-day streaming coverage on ESPN+.

The Tour’s current round of TV rights agreements runs through the end of the decade, and its partners at CBS, ESPN and NBC pay the Tour an estimated $750 million per year. ESPN pays the Tour around $100 million per year for the right to air PGA Tour Live on ESPN+, but also holds deals to air early week coverage of the Masters and PGA Championship, and is the exclusive broadcaster of the TGL.

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The post The strange genius of a PGA Tour … commercial? appeared first on Golf.

The post The strange genius of a PGA Tour … commercial? appeared first on Golf.

I was in college the last time the PGA Tour unearthed a headline-generating marketing campaign.

I know this because the marketing campaign was an unexpected birthday gift — a blue t-shirt that arrived in the mail in Syracuse without a return address. I opened the package expecting to find a clue about the sender. I was greeted by bright yellow lettering and a three-word phrase I didn’t really understand.

LIVE UNDER PAR.

By then, golf had wrapped its tendrils around me. I was a sicko, a diehard — the kind of guy who listened to the hosts of No Laying Up and The Fried Egg like they were the oracles of a sacred text. But as I stared down at the t-shirt, I was dumbfounded. What the hell was this?

I was greeted by no such surprise on Thursday morning, the same day the PGA Tour unearthed its latest marketing campaign via a 30-second promo video. The video began with a series of soundbites memorable to any golf fan: Rory McIlroy on cementing his legacy; Scottie Scheffler on chasing his boyhood dream; Tommy Fleetwood on the difficulty of winning against the best. As the video played on, highlights of some of the Tour’s biggest moments and stars were interwoven over the soundbites. Finally, the music swelled to reveal a new-old star, Brooks Koepka, smiling from the days of his youth, followed by the Tour’s snazzy new tagline.

WHERE THE BEST BELONG.

As I watched the promo, I felt something shift. The video was not lacking in self-reverence. It was proudly hyperbolic. It was, above all, an advertisement. But it felt like something more than that. For the first time in my adult life, the PGA Tour seemed to understand itself.

Now, some caveats: 1. I do not believe advertisements are meaningful in the grand scheme of things. 2. I am not defending THIS advertisement as uniquely meaningful in shaping the opinions of golf fans. 3. I can’t promise I won’t hate this advertisement after several months of watching it air 12 times per hour. 4. I can’t promise I won’t hate it after several hours. 5. I, like most fans, view commercials as a symptom of a significant institutional problem … not a solution.

But there are two parties in every advertisement: The people receiving the story (that’s us), and the people telling it (that’s the PGA Tour). And for the first time in my memory, the Tour seems to have its story straight. It is the most powerful tour in golf. It is the place that holds the greatest volume of meaningful events and crowns the greatest number of meaningful champions. It is where the best golfers in the world belong.

You can debate whether these ideas are actually true, but that’s not really the point. The point is that the Tour believes they are true, and believes in their virtuosity more sincerely than it believed in the morality of “living” “under” “par.” We need to use only the Tour’s posturing over the last several weeks (including its decision to welcome back selective LIV stars comparatively scot-free) to know the Tour is speaking from its chest.

It might sound silly to cast meaning to a slogan, but this slogan arrives on the heels of a prolonged existential journey for the Tour. In the years since LIV’s arrival in the sport, the Tour tore up and threw away key components of its competitive format on an annual basis. It has flip-flopped on war and peace. It has traded executive leadership and board structure and equity. It has changed the rules often enough to require a new rule-making structure — and it appears on the brink of doing so once again.

But those years of strife revealed something: For all its flaws, the Tour has figured out at least some of the requisite components of ascribing “meaning” and “significance” to golf tournaments. Winning the Players might never be the Masters, and winning the Memorial might never be the U.S. Open — but those events mean more than winning your local charity scramble. Money is part of it — it certainly helps your perception of “significance” to watch twentysomethings become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams — but money is not all of it. The Players matters (in part) because history tells us it is a litmus test for those on the path to greatness. The Genesis matters (in part) because it is held at a great golf course. The Memorial matters (in part) because Jack Nicklaus told us so.

History and legacy might never be strengths of the PGA Tour, especially if it continues to lack an ownership stake in any of the four majors or the Ryder Cup. The Tour is too small and young — and the rest of golf too enormous and ancient — to earn that high ground. But you do not have to own all of the history and legacy to be the best for at least 47 weeks out of the year. You just have to own enough of it, and the Tour certainly believes it does.

I’m not sure the Tour should start printing t-shirts with the new slogan plastered across the front, but I do think it can give the focus groups a rest. The new message means something. It understands something.

It is no longer living. It is belonging.

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