Since Paul Azinger‘s unceremonious ouster late last year, NBC has continued its musical chairs approach to finding a new lead golf analyst well into the heart of major championship season. With NBC’s coverage of the U.S. Open looming just over a month from now, questions are being raised about who will fill that lead chair, and why the network has taken so long to find a replacement.
The last few years have been full of drastic change for the NBC golf crew. Two years ago, the network cut a pair of its most beloved and longest tenured analysts, Roger Maltbie and Gary Koch, presumably as a way to cut costs and begin ushering in a new generation of talent. Earlier that season, the irreverent David Feherty, who had been at the network since 2016, bolted for LIV Golf mid-year. Lately, NBC has even struggled to keep key on-course analysts around for more than a few events per season, with Jim “Bones” Mackay caddying full time and Notah Begay focusing on his senior career.
As Golf Digest wisely pointed out in April, Maltbie, Koch, Feherty, and Azinger were the four highest-paid announcers on NBC’s golf ledger. It’s fair to question if NBC’s commitment to golf has changed in recent years given its recent talent decisions and the dawdling pace with which the network is deciding on a lead analyst.
NBC has tried no fewer than nine different people in the lead analyst chair this season: Kevin Kisner, Paul McGinley, Curt Byrum, Brandel Chamblee, Brad Faxon, Jim “Bones” Mackay, Frank Nobilo, Luke Donald, and Smylie Kaufman. While a “try out” period was the plan all along, without the emergence of a clear-cut front-runner, NBC finds itself in a precarious situation. Per a Sports Business Journal report Monday, NBC will use a duo of analysts for the U.S. Open, Chamblee on even holes and Faxon on odd holes. The unorthodox approach may signal a lack of confidence internally that either one is in line for the permanent gig.
It’s unusual that NBC, the owner and operator of Golf Channel, has such a short bench when it comes to analyst talent. The list of fill-in analysts includes several former players that have had fine professional careers, though it’s an indictment on the group’s collective notoriety that Mackay, a caddie, is the only one with experience winning a major championship. So far, NBC has trotted out analysts that don’t quite meet the eye test of someone who should fill the lead chair. None of them are instantly recognizable to a casual fan. There’s a reason the NFL, the gold standard in sports broadcasting, fills its booths with former quarterbacks rather than offensive linemen. The quarterbacks are the stars, and placing them in the booth gives the broadcast instant caché via name recognition alone. In golf, former major champions are the quarterbacks, and everyone else is an offensive lineman.
This is not to say that the former players NBC has tried out are poor analysts. Kisner and Kaufman in particular have brought a refreshing youth to the sport, while McGinley, Faxon, and Nobilo have proven to be consummate professionals more than capable of doing the job. Hiring any of them, however, would be an uphill battle when it comes to legitimizing the broadcast. Golf by nature has fewer opportunities to win fans over than a sport like football, where viewers watch games week-to-week. The only tournaments most casual golf fans will tune into each year are the four majors. Of those tournaments, NBC owns the rights to just two, meaning many golf fans will only be exposed to NBC’s broadcast crew twice a year. That’s not much time to convince fans that an analyst they potentially have never heard of is an authority on the sport.
Unfortunately, this is a reality that NBC can see as well. Golf is a niche sport, viewership this season is down, and NBC is only guaranteed a few strong audiences per year. Add in the dilution the professional game has seen as players defect to LIV Golf, and it becomes a serious question about whether the sport is worth substantial investment from a network. If NBC can eliminate several top analysts from the payroll, instead rotating people in and out of the top chair all season without hiring a full time replacement, is the cost savings worth diminishing the broadcast product?
Hopefully not, as that would be a disservice to fans that loyally watch the broadcasts week in and week out. However, NBC should realize that the longer they play musical chairs with the lead analyst position, the longer it will be before fans get on board with an eventual successor. The way to overcome a lack of star power in the booth is through a combination of chemistry and experience; intangibles that take some time to build.
Look no further than Greg Olsen‘s ascension as Fox’s lead NFL analyst as an example. Olsen played a glamour-less position in tight end and made one Super Bowl in his career (which he lost). Despite this, Fox swiftly named Olsen its lead analyst merely two months after network staples Joe Buck and Troy Aikman departed for ESPN. Now, Olsen is a bona fide lead NFL analyst, only being replaced by seven-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Tom Brady.
NBC has done nothing of the sort when it comes to tapping a new golf analyst. Instead, they’ve wasted precious time and reps. The network is going on seven months since they opted against renewing Azinger’s contract. Now, faced with a number of options that match the Olsen-profile — that is former, albeit lesser-known, players with solid careers and charisma for television — the network still chooses to drag its feet.
Over half a year into this experiment, NBC is no closer to finding a solution than it was last December. A new analyst will need time to build a rapport with lead play-by-play announcer Dan Hicks and the rest of the NBC crew. The window for that to have happened before the U.S. Open is long gone. At this point, it’s time to commit to something in the hopes that a new pairing can be seasoned enough for major championship golf in 2025. NBC holds U.S. Open rights through 2026, Open Championship rights through 2029, and PGA Tour and Ryder Cup rights through 2030. That’s a lot of important golf for the network to broadcast the next several years. It’s past time to name a new lead golf analyst.
