O.B. Keeler was a sportswriter forever linked to Bobby Jones. He covered every stroke the legend ever took in a tournament.
In the last couple of years, I have written so much about Jim Nantz, I joke I am his O.B. Keeler. I even sign my emails to him as “O.B.”
My latest piece is a profile of Nantz for the spring issue of Links Magazine. Naturally, the focus is the Masters.
Some excerpts:
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In his mind, the script already has been written. Jim Nantz’s broadcast career will be bracketed by the Masters.
Part One is already in the books. In 1986, at age 26, Nantz—just a few years removed from being a dreamy-eyed college kid at Houston—was tabbed by legendary television director Frank Chirkinian to work his first Masters.
Now jump forward a few years and the grand finale also takes place at Augusta. In 2035, Nantz plans on being on the call for his 50th Masters, at the age of 75.
How important is it to him? Nantz already has consulted a calendar for the exact date.
“I would say goodbye to the career on April 8, 2035,” he says. “That’s the second Sunday in April of 2035.”
In between that first and last Masters, if all goes as planned, Nantz will have worked as the play-by-play man for several Super Bowls and even more NCAA Final Fours. His resume will make him one of the supreme sports voices of his generation.
CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus sums up Nantz’s budding legacy: “If you turn on the TV and hear his voice, you know it is a big event.”
Nantz, 54, maintains a whirlwind schedule that includes myriad endorsements and speaking commitments that barely leave him time at his home that peers out over Pebble Beach. Besides his work at CBS, his main passions are growing a new wine brand and raising funds for the Nantz National Alzheimer Center in Houston, dedicated to his father. Coming along for the journey is his wife of two years, Courtney. She is intricately involved in his endeavors. Nantz says, “It is a team effort.”
Yet through it all, it always comes back to the Masters.
“It’s the one event which people relate with me the most,” Nantz says. “I might be talking to a football coach in August, and he’ll ask me, ‘What about Augusta?’ Fans at games ask me, ‘Who’s going to win the Masters this year?’ It’s the one event I think about all year long. The Masters is in my heart.”
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Yet if Nantz does indeed do 50 tournaments, it will never get more personal than Fred
Couples’s victory in 1992. In a story straight out of Hollywood, he and Couples, along with Blaine McCallister, a five-time winner on the PGA Tour, were roommates at the University
of Houston.
Nantz, working as a cub reporter for a Houston TV station, would bring the equipment back to their dorm room, where he’d do a mock broadcast of the green jacket ceremony with Couples.
“It happened,” Nantz insists. “We were just kids having fun.”
In 1992, their college fantasy actually took place in Butler Cabin, Nantz presiding over the ceremony on TV in which Couples is being presented his green jacket. Initially, Nantz wasn’t going to make it personal, but ultimately, he had to bring his old roommate back to that dorm room in Houston.
“In the end I said, ‘You know, Fred. I think about our days at the University of Houston and Taub Hall.’
“He turned his head, covered his eyes, and looked off to the side. My voice is quivering. I said, ‘All of us said, One day you’re going to look great in a green jacket.’”
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This year’s tournament will be number 29 on his way to 50. Yet he allows that maybe he won’t do his final signoff on April 8, 2035. There could be a change to the script.
Last year, Nantz made a speech in which he spoke about his grand plan. In the audience was one of his heroes, Jack Whitaker, who covered a few Masters of his own.
“We were having a drink after the event,” Nantz recalls, “and he said, out of the blue, ‘You know, I think you might want to amend your way of thinking about 50 Masters and do 51.’ I said, ‘Why is that, Mr. Whitaker?’ He said, ‘Because if you look it up, your 51st Masters would be the 100th Masters played. You need to be there for that one.’ So maybe it’s 50 plus 1.”
The second Sunday of April 2036 is the 13th. You can bet Jim Nantz already knows that.