How Kevin Kisner got the lead analyst job at NBC

The courtship between NBC Sports and the network’s top golf analyst, Kevin Kisner, began in December 2023, but it took more than nine months before anyone had the courage to explain the relationship.

Now in late September, it was time, finally, for a hometown visit. As golf season rolls into football, a slew of NBC sports brass including golf honcho Sam Flood, president Rick Cordella and executive producer Tommy Roy make plans to visit Kisner at his forever home in Aiken, SC The goal? Stopping Kisner from taking his broadcasting talents to the fullest. After nine months of shaking their interest – Kisner insisted on playing out the rest of his professional career before leaving TV, while NBC gave the lead analyst job at the US Open and Open Championship to Brandel Chamblee and Luke Donald – NBC was ready to go. all-in.

A full-time commitment was not on anyone’s mind for a very long time in the months leading up to September. Not after NBC announced Kisner as the interim lead commentator for several big-time PGA Tour events (The Sentry, WM Phoenix Open, and Players) filling in for Paul Azinger. Not after Kisner impressed NBC Sports brass with his performance, balancing his knowledge of the pro game with his rib-cutting sense of humor. And even after Kisner enjoyed enough experience to sign up for NBC’s coverage of the FedEx Cup Playoff season-ending events, a three-week trial that would have mirrored life in a full-time gig.

The truth is that neither team was ready for the next step. Kisner’s two years of PGA Tour eligibility meant he wasn’t in position to take the NBC job for much of 2024, and NBC was weary of the risk of hiring a TV neophyte while its broadcasts were being reconsidered for restructuring under Flood. It would be so simple for Kisner to fill Azinger’s soon-to-be-vacated lead analyst seat, avoiding staff headaches with US Open and Open Championship coverage and confusion from the golf world. NBC chose this path enough to consider adding a full-time commentator in early ’24, but the prestige of the job and the multibillion-dollar investment required a home-run shift. The network, perhaps scarred from the end of Azinger’s tenure, decided it was better to wait for the right pitch.

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Flood, Cordella and Roy arrive in Aiken in the fall and find Kisner feeling open-minded. The clock was ticking on the 40-year-old pro, who now has just one year of PGA Tour eligibility remaining courtesy of a top-50 exemption. He would enter a dozen Tour events in 2025, but would be relegated to weak field events. If his play improved — unlikely for a player of Kisner’s age (40) and height (181st on Tour in 2024) — his schedule could fill up, but that was far from certain.. On the other hand, if his game continues on its recent trajectory, he would be available for weeks on NBC’s PGA Tour coverage in 2025, and his playing career would end in 2026.

In other words, if NBC was willing to work with him on details, Kisner was open to taking the gig.

“I have a good relationship with Sam Flood. I like the way he talks about things. He’s direct, and that’s the way I am,” Kisner said. “My wife and I sat down with him [Flood, Cordella and Roy] three and a half hours and we just talk about life. We talked about the future – what we felt was good, bad, how to make golf better, how they thought I could fit into their team. “

At the end of the discussion, a decision was made. Kisner will take on 10 events in 2025 and the permanent title of NBC Golf’s lead analyst while retaining interim PGA Tour playing rights. If his acting career interferes with the schedule, NBC will be flexible, and if not, NBC will be the beneficiary.

“They will work with me in 2025,” Kisner said. “If something happens when I win and play well, they say, ‘That’s good.’ And I will play more golf. If not, I told them to fully commit to 2026. “

At NBC, Kisner was the right fit for the job. Of all the analysts polled in ’24, Kisner was the network’s top player. He was the first outsider in what turned out to be a whirlwind tryout for the leadership seat in 2024, and the candidate playing in the booth was very noisy. In the weeks since he joined the NBC team, Kisner enjoyed a happy relationship with playboy (and friend) Dan Hicks, made headlines for his colorful criticism, and seemed to understand the finer points of analysis – enlarge, clarify, explain – immediately.

“With all the Tour players, I pay attention to how they handle press conferences and interviews, how they react to their caddies in the air,” said Roy. “I’m always trying to get a sense of whether they’re good at speaking.”

“I’m with Kevin, I started trying to talk to him in the field years ago. I would tell him, Hey, if the day comes that you’re ready to call it a day playing golf, I think you have a chance to be in our business here, and be successful at it..”

Even with Roy’s approval, Kisner’s entry into the leadership seat qualifies as an upset. The 40-year-old professional gives NBC something it hasn’t had in more than 30 years: a lead analyst this is not the case the big winner of the tournament. That includes decades of tradition in golf TV, where the prevailing sentiment is that the jobs of top commentators are limited to those with great pedigree and first-hand knowledge of history-changing moments.

There is a valid argument that this practice is outdated. Some of the biggest success stories in recent sports TV history have been players with under-statistics (Pat McAfee), while FOX’s $100 million contract with Tom Brady showed that even the greatest players of all time can struggle in the booth. Stated differently, an analyst’s background doesn’t matter if his insight isn’t interesting or informative.

“I want 12 handicaps in the club or on his couch gone, yes, he was right about that, I will try thator, that’s exactly what happened,” said Kisner, who is expected to call the US Open, Open Championship and Ryder Cup for NBC in 2025. “Then I want Scottie Scheffler or Max Homa or Brian Harman to go, Yeah, I knocked the heck out of that putt. Or, yes, i made a bad swing in that situation. I want everyone to say, that’s exactly what happened. That’s why I’m sitting in that chair.”

Criticism is an art form in the seat of the great commentator, where the subjects of criticism are often scrutinized. It helped NBC’s confidence to know that Kisner had the net in the big moments. When Kisner signed his contract, the network had already decided to bring back the big broadcast experiment from 2024, the “odd-even” format, which divides the work of the play and the work of the analyst between teams designed for odd and even-numbered slots. . The purpose of this strategy, Flood and Roy, is to encourage a conversation between broadcasters that fans can listen to, rather than talk to the broadcasters. to audience at home. NBC hopes the switch to “odd-even” will make life easier for Kisner as he transitions to golf TV. It will make it easier to prepare, for example, and create fewer, more targeted speaking opportunities.

But Kisner isn’t worried about flying off the handle. On the contrary. The biggest problem facing the networks is making something fun, he says, and his biggest benefit is understanding how to bridge the gap between the players involved in the media business and the sports economy that is an extension of it.

“I think the narrative has always been that there were two sides, right? The media and then the golfers. “It was always like golfers didn’t want to reveal too much, because they didn’t want the media to smear them or take a bad picture of them,” Kisner said. “When I was on both sides, that’s when I realized that the partnership should not be bigger than it is now. The media is a big fast deal. The PGA Tour’s media rights deal is the biggest money maker of all, and the players need to understand that the better they produce on TV, the more money they can play, and the more money they can earn.”

These are the cold realities of sports business, and in the scrutinized world of the PGA Tour, Kisner’s understanding of the media’s importance has long made him an outsider. Good golfers get paychecks, you see, but the rich golfers get eyeballs. That insight is what pushed him into YouTube and podcasting before NBC came along, and it’s what will give him a second life in the world’s second-largest golf career.

In Kisner’s telling, the simplest version of his new role at NBC is to serve as a messenger between golf’s two occasionally conflicting camps: the players and the people. Many broadcasters have tried to help people understand the players, but Kisner says he feels he can help the relationship work in a different way.

“I hope these top players understand that I am their friend first. I would never do anything to make them feel disrespected or hurt their brand. I’m here to tell the truth,” Kisner said. “I will say it like I did when they were sitting with me in the locker room, and next week I will play with them, so that I never get into a fight. statement to get clicks. I tell it like it is, man, and that’s what I’ve done my whole career. Ask any player, he knows where he stands with me at all times, and that’s what I plan to do in the booth.”

Yes, the truth has many shades, but Kisner seems to have a unique ability to control the discomfort that comes his way. He’s as funny as golf television has been since David Feherty, and he’s already dreaming up ways to quickly get the audience in his corner, even if it means running afoul of the FCC.

“I’m trying to see if Tommy will let me do my camera and take my shirt off,” Kisner said, referencing his now-infamous Presidents Cup bet with Max Homa. “Dan and I are going to get down to our skivvies, and introduce ourselves to the world.”

He pauses just after delivering the line, as if holding back a laugh.

It’s a show touch, and that’s exactly the point.

You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com. To subscribe to the GOLF newsletter, click the link here.