Q&A With Tom Weiskopf

The 1986 Masters was all about Jack Nicklaus and his heroic charge against an all-star leaderboard, and in recalling the event the CBS team has gotten its due for the brilliant commentating that day. Except Tom Weiskopf.

I've always felt that Weiskopf, sitting in Butler Cabin with Brent Musberger as a commentator, brought the necessary perspective of a former Nicklaus rival along with a wonderful sense of timing and wisdom to the broadcast.  I recently spoke to him over the phone about that day. Weiskopf had just returned from China on golf course design business, but was more than happy to talk about the 1986 Masters.

GS: When was the last time you saw the entire telecast?

TW: I never have seen it. (Laughs). I’ve seen segments of it. I saw some of the highlight show the other night on Golf Channel.

GS: You were sitting in Butler Cabin with Brent Musberger. That has to be a tough place to weigh in from because you are sometimes on camera and you are not on the course with action right in front of you.

TW: I would say it is. Because, on the course you are more in tune with the play because you’ve watched a lot of players play in front of you and so you are more into what the course is playing like. You can also get up and relax when they go to commercial or whatever, so you’re in a much more concentrated atmosphere that is still relaxed. When you are in Butler Cabin, you have two monitors in front of you but there are a lot of people moving around all the time. They’re bringing in a lot of information to Brent Musberger, who is not really a golfer. As Frank Chirkinian said to me, your job is to babysit Brent Musberger. That was the definition of my duties. He was there because they’re justifying an enormous salary to an individual who could care less, in all honesty, about the game of golf. He didn’t know the difference between a chip and a pitch.

GS: Really?

TW: I had to explain that to him. A pitch is when a ball travels further in the air than the ground. A chip is when it goes further on the ground than the air. He called Ben Crenshaw, Bob Crenshaw. The worst was a real windy day one year and Tom Watson was in contention, he starts out by saying, “well gee whiz this will really affect Tom Watson with these high winds today, what are his chances?” And I simply said, which was easy to say, well, I guess winning five British Opens doesn’t give him a lot of knowledge or experience in this type of situation Brent. I said it sarcastically and on the air, but it was a very frustrating time for me to be down there because I’m trying to concentrate and it just wasn’t a relaxed atmosphere.

GS: How did it work when you wanted to chime in?

TW: You had two buttons. You had the cough button and then you had another one that you could hit that would go to Chirkinian and then he would come back to you. It wouldn’t go to anyone else, it’d just go to Frank and he’d come on and say, “what in the hell do you want?” Usually it was for times when someone could make a comment that could help the telecast, say if you were down at 13 and noticed the wind was changing. But I was always afraid to hit the button!

GS: So Sunday Jack is making his charge and there is the exchange we all remember, when he’s getting ready to hit his shot, backs off and Jim Nantz sets you up perfectly.

TW: Jack had played that hole so well and with that pin placement it was accessible and he was the type of player where, with his background and playing against him, I knew that had to be situation that he had to take advantage of. That was the tournament for him in my mind for him with three holes remaining because I thought that was probably the easiest of the three remaining holes to birdie and because he had played it so well in the past. 

He’s such a versatile shotmaker and he was never really given credit for that, especially under pressure when he had to. And that was an accessible hole location. Jack was a very percentage type of player that rarely gambled, but when he did take a chance, he seemed like he always hit the right shot in that situation and got the reward. He just knew how to play a shot and a hole under those conditions whether it was the first round or the last round, better than anyone else. That’s why he won 18 majors.

Anyway, my mind was moving fast, but I didn’t push a button and instigate that. The comment was a little bit tongue in cheek, a little bit of a sarcastic comment that really defined me. I don't even remember the exact words I said, but basically I said if I thought like that guy, I would have won this tournament. Anyone could have said that. But it just popped in my head. Well you know he’s trying to make up his mind what type of shot he’s going to play. He wasn’t set. He never hit a shot unless he was prepared to play it. He backed off a lot. He just took an enormous amount of time in his preparation. He never got ahead of himself. He probably played a high soft cut I imagine. He’s playing it against the slope of the bank that will bring the ball down to the hole. And he just looked at it for a moment and then just bent down to pick up his tee because he knew how good it was going to be.

Here’s a clip of the moment. My favorite thing about Weiskopf’s commentary is how he takes it right up to the moment Nicklaus hits the shot. Normally, it’s an annoyance to hear an announcer chattering at Augusta when the silence there is so powerful, but here Weiskopf just heightens the drama that much more by setting it up right to the moment Jack pulls the trigger.

GS: So now he comes to 17 at -8 while Seve is making a mess of 15.

TW: On 17 he was a little bit fortunate on the drive but he gave himself the best angle. He’s playing up the left side, a guy who never drove the ball like a Ben Hogan type of driver that had three fairways in mind: the left side the middle and the right. He’s going to play up the left side now and when he does that you know he’s got the confidence, he’s got control of the golf tournament in his hands. It gave him a perfect angle from the left side. Which is gone, by the way with the trees they’ve planted. But a perfect angle and he played a perfect shot to the left of the hole and then he makes an unbelievable putt.

GS: Now a moment that rarely gets talked about in all the fuss over Verne Lundquist’s call is the exchange you and Verne had watching the replay.

TW: I don’t remember even being involved in 17!

I play the tape for Weiskopf. Here it is, starting with the original putt and eventually, the exchange where he reacts to the replay and Lundquist's question:

TW: I don’t remember that at all!

GS: Do you know what it is you say quietly after we see the putt goes in? I abhor you? I adore you? I implore you?

TW: (Laughs) I don’t. I'm pretty sure it wasn't "adore you!"

He had a tendency when wouldn’t putt well to lift his head. We talked about that when we played occasionally. And you know when the putt goes in, I think everyone in the world, maybe for the first time in Jack Nicklaus’ life, wanted him to win that golf tournament. Everybody! Even people who weren’t Nicklaus fans had to root for him. It’s just one of the great moments in sports. Here’s a guy 46 years of age and five or six years since he’d won his last major and it just defined him. I remember one time I was sitting in the back of the room one year when he was giving his interview to the press and they asked if he ever remembered missing a putt to lose a major tournament and he paused not very long and said, "Not to my recollection." It’s just like if he had to hit a good wedge shot, but you wouldn’t bet against him if he had to do it.

He just could pull all of that stuff together. That’s how strong of an individual he was.

GS: Do you miss announcing there?

 TW: Well, that’s the thing that’s so exciting about being involved in a major championship telecast. They’re so exciting and they’re part of history and usually some very unusual things happen. But I don’t know the young guys well enough. I could pick it up pretty quick, but Nicklaus was 46 and I was 43, so I was still current with everybody that was out there.

GS: What do you make of the telecasts today?

TW: I love to listen to these telecasts and there are some guys that don’t get their just due who do some fantastic work. Golf is still the most difficult sport to announce simply because there are so many things happening all at the same time in so many places. And these producers always want to get the live shot so that then you get the spontaneity. They don’t like to show something taped. But I still don’t think they cover it correctly.

GS: How so?

TW: I’m a big NFL fan and the thing about the NFL is the fact that these pre-game shows, there’s so much time given to the players. They really humanize these players as to their abilities and their talents and they really make you aware of the game. I wish golf did a little more of that. I thoroughly enjoyed the recent Golf Channel “State of the Game” show. I think if they did more of that, especially if they did that before each round at the majors, and summarized what you might see today, it’s just too many shots all the time. There’s not a lot of analytical stuff.

GS: What about all of the instruction analysis?

TW: Forget the golf swing. That’s nonsense. Good God, if the camera is not in the perfect position, it’s tough for a good analyst to analyze the swing if the angle isn’t right. And of course you always know the result before you start the analyzing, so it’s easy to come up with a bunch of nonsense. But I don’t see how that helps the average guy. Here’s the trouble: they never give the analysts enough time to set up the shot. To really talk about it. Fewer words are always better. That’s what made Summerall. If you had that extra 5 to 10 seconds it would help so much.

It was those extra few seconds that gave Weiskopf a chance to weigh in and only add to the greatest tournament and most riveting telecast the game has ever seen.