Broadcaster shared how Tom Watson’s letter to CBS | Sports News

A humorous jibe in regards to the velocity of the Augusta National’s greens as soon as led to a veteran broadcaster dropping his job. Gary McCord made the dig during a 1994 Masters broadcast on CBA, and though it received laughs on air, Augusta officers have been left unimpressed.

After McCord’s feedback, the two-time Masters champion Tom Watson despatched a handwritten letter demanding that McCord be eliminated. Months later, the broadcaster was taken off the Masters protection for good. 

The second occurred during the ultimate spherical of that 12 months’s match, when McCord was commentating as Jose Maria Olazabal lined up a putt on the seventeenth inexperienced.

McCord joked: “I don’t think they mow these greens, I think they bikini wax them.” CBS Sports president, Neal Pilson, was subsequent to the broadcasters on the time and located the remark amusing – however issues quickly took a flip for the more serious for McCord.

Watson, an eight-time main winner with two Masters wins underneath his belt, despatched the grievance to the CBS Golf producer, Frank Chirkinian. McCord recounted the second he heard in regards to the backlash on a latest episode of Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers. 

He mentioned: “I get called into Frank’s office and he goes, ‘Close the door.’ So I close the door, and he throws me a letter, and it’s written in pencil.

“And I take a look at the letter, it says addressed to Augusta National. And it says, ‘We need to eradicate this lesion on golf. He is the Howard Stern of golf and we need to pay attention to this and what he said,’ signed Tom Watson.”

A few months later, McCord was pulled from all future Masters coverage, but he remained a key voice in CBS’s golf broadcasts up until 2019. 

The next year, at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, McCord confronted Watson about the letter and expressed his disappointment at the fact the player hadn’t come straight to him to express his concerns. 

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McCord mentioned: “Tom registers in front of me and he turns around to walk out and I said, ‘Have you got a second?’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘I’m gonna meet you right there in the alcove.’ So I go in there, and he’s sitting there. And next thing I know, he’s poking me in the chest and I’m poking him in the chest and I kind of look over and you guys are sitting there laughing your a– off because we’re gonna get in a fight over there.

“And I just told him that I don’t understand why he didn’t do this and man up and come to talk to me first. He was trying to be God in this whole thing. That was the intent of the conversation.”

However, he revealed that the pair later patched issues up and received alongside on the Champions Tour. McCord later mentioned: “I got more publicity for doing this than anything I ever did in golf,” he said in a later interview. Still, it remains one of the most infamous moments in golf TV history — a cautionary tale about how far is too far when it comes to humor at Augusta.”