Let’s start at the beginning, at least in terms of your television career. When did that kick-off and when did it end?

I started at the 1989 Ryder Cup at The Belfry. I worked there for the USA network and my last telecast for CBS was at the end of 2019 (pictured above back in 2010).

It actually happened quite by accident. Until 1989 the PGA of America hadn’t charged a rights-fee for the Ryder Cup in the U.S and, when they did, the major networks all passed on it. They couldn’t make any money from it. USA was a cable network just getting into doing early-round coverage of the PGA Tour. They paid $250,000 for the right to cover the ’89 Ryder Cup.

To do that they needed announcers. They had Ben Wright, Gary McCord and a football guy called Jim Simpson. But they needed one more, to go on course, which turned out to be me only because I was over there anyway coaching Mark Calcavecchia, Ken Green and Bernhard Langer. That was how I got started.

Legendary CBS Golf director and producer Frank Chirkinian working a broadcast. PHOTO: Getty Images.

From there, USA developed a relationship with CBS and I was hired as USA’s lead analyst after that Ryder Cup. That led to me working with the legendary producer, Frank Chirkinian, at CBS. In 1990 I did a few events for them and in ’92 they hired me full-time. So, I was on television for three decades.

How much did it change in that time?

Unbelievably. Chirkinian used to produce and direct because the shows were much slower and had a lot fewer commercials. But when Tiger came along in ’97 the rights-fees exploded and the tour did that multiple-times over the course of Tiger’s career. As a consequence, the networks had to get the money somehow, which is why today’s telecasts are so inundated with commercials. Today’s shows are a lot messier.

So, we can blame Tiger for all the TV commercials?

(laughs) You can actually ‘blame’ Tiger for a lot. He is both the best thing that has ever happened to golf and, in some cases, the worst thing.

The PGA Tour has used Tiger as a hammer to bludgeon its partners. They had Tiger so the tour’s business partners had to do all sorts of things. There was no recourse either, no partnerships per se. Not that I could see. They had arguably the most visible sportsman in the world and they rode him and ‘putting him away wet,’ as the old saying about horses goes. There was no questioning what the Tour did.

As a result, the Tour never felt an obligation to improve its product. They had a formula and they stuck to it. As far as the PGA Tour was concerned.’ growing the game’ meant growing its own income and its own dominance.

How would things have gone had there not been a Tiger?

Golf is a niche sport. It always will be. Regardless of Tiger’s brilliance, it is never going to be a mainstream sport on television. Not in the U.S, anyway. Had he not been around, that false hope would never have been dangled in front of us and people wouldn’t have been trying to make it more than it really is. There would have been no constant need to suck money out of the game.

How would that have impacted on television commentary? Would it have stayed more like the BBC-style, where the commentators – like Peter Alliss – were given time and space to expand on what we were watching?

I saw something on social media this year. A player once made an eight out of the pot bunker on the 14th hole at Hilton Head. The great Vin Scully did the commentary. He did two minutes of brilliant commentary. That would never happen today. No one gets that long to talk about anything. I understand the need to see lots of shots. But attention spans have shortened.

Back in the day, I did a 27-page instruction story for U.S Golf Digest.…

I wrote it!

(laughs) You did. But do you think there will be a 27-page story in any magazine today? Not a chance. If you can’t read a story while you’re in the bathroom, they don’t want to print it. Golf is the same. Sometimes it needs to be slow; sometimes it needs to be quick. But to make it ‘bang-bang-bang’ all the time is hardly representative of what golf is.

Isn’t it a waste of your expertise to give you so little time to talk?

That started when CBS did a survey that discovered people wanted to watch golf on TV for a) the competition and b) if they wanted to see a favourite player in action. All of which would help them in their own golf. So, they came up with the high-speed camera. When we started those sequences, I had up to a minute to talk and put in graphics etc. I was able to give them a little lesson, as best I could in that time frame. It was a huge success in the beginning.

Over the next 16-17 years that I did those, I was eventually down to ten seconds. What am I supposed to say in that short a time? They completely bastardised that whole segment. You can’t teach anyone anything in ten seconds, which is a microcosm of golf on television over the last 30 years.

What came first? Did that cause shorter attention spans? Or did the public call for that sort of thing because of their shorter attention spans?

It’s hard to say. But there was a time when that segment was the most popular part of every CBS broadcast. But as it got shorter it eventually became an annoyance. It was basically neutered.

Can’t you apply that word to the commentators generally? Any expertise they might have is never going to show if all they do is say, ‘he’s hitting 5-iron, back to the 16th.’

There are way too many announcers and way too little time to talk. Take CBS. They have two or three on-course announcers. They have three more, plus Jim Nantz, in the towers. So, they often have three people trying to talk over one shot. You can’t do that. It stops being teamwork and becomes one-upmanship. If one announcer says something, the next one says, ‘yeah, but…’

So, what’s the solution?

I’d have way fewer announcers. That would alleviate part of the problem. In fact, this is where LIV Golf has an opportunity. They are never going to be truly successful until they have a successful product on television. They have the money to do it commercial-free. And, if they hire the right producer and announcers, they can make it a really interesting product.

We could get to the stage where you can follow a group or a player all the way round and never have the announcers describe shots. I joke with people about this. Play a drinking game where, every time the announcer, tells you what you’ve just seen, have a drink. You’ll be drunk pretty quickly.

Chirkinian used to tell us if we ever said something he’d just seen, we’d be fired. He trained us. LIV Golf can re-invent that process. Let them wax poetic over swings, whatever. Then you can compile eight or ten shots from different people – not just putts – and show them rapid-fire on tape. You can still jump around. Let the viewers see the shots. There are so many things you can do when you are not burdened with promotions and commercials.

Kostis interviewing Tiger Woods, who he blames for the best and worst things in the professional game. PHOTO: Getty Images.

When did this decline set in?

There is nobody in PGA Tour or network management that give a rat’s arse about the quality of the product. They don’t care about the viewer experience. They care about the bottom line. Once the Tour purses rose substantially, the networks had to cover those costs and so the quality of the production went downhill. It was all so cluttered. So, if there was a genesis to the decline, it was the increase in prizemoney.

There was a time in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when CBS golf accounted for over 20 percent of the profit for the whole network. That’s why Chirkinian had so much freedom. But when the rights fees went up and the profits went down, the quality of the product disintegrated.

What about the announcers across the networks? Some don’t seem too suited to the jobs they have. Others don’t have anything to say. And there is a general sameness. Shouldn’t there be a mixture of people all with different areas of expertise?

The Tour tries to whitewash everything. I know they have made a concerted effort to get jobs for ex-players who will be nothing but pro-PGA Tour. That is one reason why Gary McCord (pictured right) and I were released. We weren’t beholden to the Tour all the time. I was reprimanded several times for telling a first-time winner during the interview on the 72nd green that they now had a full-time job for two years and a trip to the Masters. The PGA Tour got upset because I didn’t mention that the guy won x number of FedExCup points. You think that’s what a player thinks of after his first victory? I doubt it.

So, the Tour looks for yes-men. And that’s what they’ve got. Every ex-player is pro-PGA Tour. All the magazines, the Golf Channel, the networks – they are all in the Tour’s pocket. So, there is no objectivity. There is no one like Henry Longhurst or Ben Wright out there now. They added a dimension to telecasts, which was the brilliance of Chirkinian. He put together a diverse ensemble.

When I went to work for Frank, he told me he didn’t hire me to be funny. “Do not be funny,” he said. “You are not funny. You are smart. So be smart. I’ve got McCord and Wright for funny.” We worked as a team and never tried to step on each other. We always tried to be additive. Frank never cared if a viewer liked me and hated McCord. Or vica versa. He just wanted people to like the show.

That’s gone now. all we have is a bunch of ex-player commentators trying to outdo each other with Tour-speak the average person doesn’t begin to understand.

For example?

“Oh man, did you see how he laid the shaft down in transition? That was gorgeous.” That means nothing to a 15-handicapper. It’s all so incestuous. No one is talking to the viewer anymore.