Five years later, NBC broadcast the Hawaiian Open Golf Tournament, which was the first live color sports transmission from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland.
[9] Announcers who have been deemed not to have acted with the decorum expected by the club have been removed, notably Jack Whitaker[11] and analyst Gary McCord.
[9] Whitaker referred to the gallery at the end of the 18-hole Monday playoff in 1966 as a "mob" and missed five years (1967–1971);[11] McCord last worked on the Masters telecast in 1994, being banned that summer after using the terms "bikini wax" and "body bags" in his descriptions.
[15] Chirkinian was particularly well regarded for the coverage of the Masters Tournament that he oversaw for four decades, working closely with the management of Augusta National to ensure they were satisfied.
ABC broadcast golf events for the first time in 1962 when it began televising the Open Championship as part of its anthology series Wide World of Sports.
Meanwhile, the three on-course reporters, which included Judy Rankin and Ed Sneed in addition to Rosburg, would be utilized when prompted by the anchor team.
[21] In 1983, NBC televised the first Skins Game ever held, with Vin Scully and Ben Crenshaw serving as announcers for the tournament broadcast.
TBS also used golf instructor David Leadbetter, former LPGA player Donna Caponi, and NFL analyst Pat Haden for the 1991 PGA Championship coverage.
CBS had lost the rights to the National Football Conference to Fox (where Summerall and his broadcasting colleague, John Madden would soon move over to) prior to the 1994 NFL season.
In May 1997, right after Tiger Woods won his first Masters, the PGA Tour announced a $400 million, four-year broadcasting agreement for 1999–2002 with NBC, ABC, CBS, ESPN, USAand the Golf Channel.
[38] After facing much criticism for its golf coverage, especially Jack Nicklaus' involvement and Brent Musburger's perceived lack of knowledge of the game, ABC decided to completely overhaul its visual presentation, becoming more in line with cable partner ESPN, while changing the format for its coverage to be more of the standard in line with the other networks, featuring a lead anchor team, announcers assigned to individual holes, and on-course reporters.
Steve Melnyk, Peter Alliss and Ian Baker-Finch became hole announcers, while Bob Rosburg, Judy Rankin and Rolfing were the primary on-course reporters.
CBS covered the Bob Hope Classic in 2003 due to ABC holding the broadcast rights to Super Bowl XXXVII, which overlapped with the tournament.
However, when Golf Channel took over the broadcast rights to the tournament, the network only assigned live coverage to PGA West (both the Palmer and Nicklaus courses).
Ian Baker-Finch and Peter Alliss remained hole announcers in 2004, while ESPN's Andy North joined Brown and Rankin as an on-course reporter.
For the rest of the season, ABC had several active PGA players substitute as analysts alongside Baker-Finch, including Hal Sutton and Fred Couples.
In the spring of 2006, Judy Rankin was diagnosed with breast cancer, resulting in ESPN's Billy Kratzert replacing her as an on-course reporter while she sought treatment.
In 2004, ABC cut away from the final round of the Buick Classic PGA Tour golf tournament at 7:00 p.m. Eastern and Central Time Zones to show a rerun of America's Funniest Home Videos.
Mike Tirico was given the position as lead announcer for Monday Night Football; he left the golf team following the Deutsche Bank Championship in September.
ESPN moved all live golf coverage to cable in 2010, with ABC being relegated to carrying a three-hour encore presentation of the day's Open Championship rounds starting at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
With NBC having granted only Friday rights to ESPN, the singles matches aired on USA, which would be the final golf telecast for the network.
Fox, which has televised just one PGA Tour sanctioned event in its history (the unofficial CVS Charity Classic in 2011), paid $1 billion for full rights to all USGA championships.
[59] On April 23, 2014, Fox Sports announced that Greg Norman would join Joe Buck[60][61] as its lead golf commentary team.
In June 2015, the Fox family covered the U.S. Open for the first time, from Chambers Bay in University Place, Washington, southwest of Tacoma.
[80] In January 2016, Greg Norman was let go by Fox in response to poor reception towards his performance during the U.S. Open and was replaced by former ESPN analyst Paul Azinger.
[86] Beginning in 2016, Sky Sports will have exclusive UK rights to The Open with the BBC showing a 2-hour highlights programme every night instead of live coverage.
Other golfers such as Peter Oosterhuis, Tony Johnstone, Thomas Bjørn, David Howell, Richard Boxall, Jamie Spence, Mark Roe, Robert Lee, Ross McFarlane, Sandy Lyle, Colin Montgomerie, Paul McGinley, Philip Parkin and Ken Brown contributing to their coverage over the years.
[89] This was done in an effort to avoid the occasional logjam caused by a three-man booth, which had been Joe Buck with analysts Paul Azinger and Brad Faxon.
On October 10, 2018, it was announced that ESPN would replace TNT as the PGA Championship's cable partner beginning in 2020, with CBS remaining broadcast television rightsholder.
This was reported that the rescheduling of the professional championships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was a factor in the decision, and that Fox had originally discussed working with NBC before negotiating the withdrawal instead.