Longtime CBS sports broadcaster Jim Nantz is coming to his network’s defense after a mishap during The 2026 Masters gave viewers an obstructed view of Rory McIlroy’s tournament-winning putt on Sunday, April 12.
“It’s live television. We all make mistakes,” Nantz, 66, said during a Tuesday, April 14, appearance on the Pat McAfee Show.
He then gestured with his fingers to show that “for the record, the putt was that long.”
“If he would have missed it, we would have had the all-time story in the history of golf,” Nantz continued. “But I’m really proud of our crew. You’re making, as you said, so many decisions. Split-second decisions. The things that were shown, produced by our crew…hundreds of people involved over the course of four days, some 30 hours of television.”
CBS has aired The Masters annually since 1956, the first year the tournament was shown on TV. Nantz has anchored the network’s coverage since 1989.
“I can’t speak to the difficulty and some of the decision-making, and some of the other things that people are responsible for,” he added. “I just know that our crew is the best in the business. I just walk away with warm memories and a lot of pride for what everybody did.”
Though CBS showed McIlroy’s final putt, the angle was from behind, meaning his body shielded the view of the putt’s trajectory. Fans instead had to gauge his reaction and wait for Nantz’s final call. (“Rory is a rare repeat winner at Augusta,” Nantz said.)
But Nantz seems to be one of the few defending CBS. NBC’s lead golf analyst, Kevin Kisner, tore into CBS for its Masters production, pointing specifically to the network seeming to have a difficult time showing live shots.
“What are we doing? You have no commercials. Play live shots,” he said on the Monday, April 13, episode of his “ForePlay” podcast. “Our production team at NBC prides themselves on playing every shot that they possibly can live. When we can’t, we have to say ‘a moment ago’ because we’re trying to make the whole movie make sense.”
Kisner, 42, is NBC’s lead voice for golf’s other three major tournaments, The Players Championship, U.S. Open and British Open.
He added, “I have no idea what they’re doing. Literally no idea.”
“There was a couple shots in the two days that I’m telling you were seven to 10 minutes behind,” Kisner insisted. “It was unbelievable, dude. I’m not trying to just kill them.”
