If you spend even a little time with golf’s wave of TV analysts, you realize something unusual: by the letter of the law, almost no of them are qualified.
The reason for this is not broadcast training or golf skills, but something much simpler. In the history of golf television, there have only been a handful of so-called “Lead Analysts” – the talking heads atop each network’s broadcasts – and all but one have been major championship winners.
On Wednesday morning, that group added a surprising new voice to the mix: Jim Furyk, who will call two PGA Tour events on the Florida swing — the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship — in the lead analyst chair for Golf Channel.
The 55-year-old US Open winner and former Ryder Cup captain is no stranger to life between the ropes. In recent years, he has been a fixture on the PGA Tour Champions, winning the Tour’s Rookie of the Year award in 2021 and hosting an annual Champions Tour event through his charity, Furyk and Friends. His TV and radio history is less thorough, although in his thirty years and seventeen victories on the PGA Tour he has been no stranger to the media world – and has been a frequent guest on SiriusXM over the years.
“It’s probably on a trial basis, see how much I like it, get a feel for it,” Furyk said the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson. “Every new venture is a learning process. There is a feel and flow to how the show is done. I am focused on doing the best job for two weeks.”
The 17-time PGA Tour winner may not have a preponderance of TV experience, but he does have a wealth of professional experience to lean on. He has competed as a pro for more than three decades and enters the Players Championship with five top-5 finishes in the event, including two second-place finishes, most recently as a out-of-nowhere 48-year-old in 2019. Furyk has never won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, but he was only the third pro ever (after Palmer and Bruce Fleisher) to win his first two starts on the Champions Tour.
It’s early to predict exactly what the trial period means for Furyk’s TV future (largely because he doesn’t have a TV at the moment). past to talk about), but he comes into the job with something every fellow golf analyst longs for: his 2003 US Open victory at Olympia Fields. While Furyk may ultimately choose not to pursue the lead analyst role at one of the major golf networks, the major championship pedigree gives him a potential path to a lead analyst seat that, until NBC’s Kevin Kisner, has only been occupied by major championship winners.
Ironically, Kisner’s path to the leadership chair at NBC could provide clues for Furyk as he tries to navigate the journey forward. Kisner was a full-time PGA Tour player when he first participated in NBC’s “tryout” to replace Paul Azinger in the lead analyst seat, then flirted with the job part-time for a year before being named Azinger’s permanent replacement in late 2024.
#Golf #Channel #hires #surprise #lead #analyst #PGA #Tour #coverage