As we all know, the concept of the gimme putt is anathema to the PGA Tour.
From 1975-'79, I worked for PGA professional Tony Bruno. For five years I watched, lost in admiration, as Tony ran the golf shop at Battleground Country Club in Manalapan, N.J. Tony put in 80-hour weeks doing what nearly 29,000 men and women club pros do every day: Keeping the game alive with a smile.
I never practice calls. Everything you hear is reactionary. The way I look at it is that broadcasters are just paid observers, just there to tell you what we see.
The late, great ABC golf anchor Jim McKay once advised me, 'When you look into the camera, imagine you are talking to one person on the other end.' The next time you hear 'Hello, friends' at the start of a broadcast, just know that I'm channeling my father at that very moment. I see him on the other side of that camera, smiling right back.
On June 3, 2015, in keeping with a long tradition, I visited my home club in the Pepper Pike suburb of Cleveland, known simply as The Country Club. It's an old William Flynn design and perhaps the most underrated course in America. It's elegant, challenging and filled with old-world charm.
In 2014, when my wife, Courtney, was expecting our daughter and we were contemplating a name, I said, 'How about Finley?' Only after Courtney said that she loved the name did I reveal that it was inspired by an aspect of Samuel Finley Brown Morse.
I love stone crabs. And I love popcorn.
Hello, friends.' I've had fun with that expression to satisfy the cynics, but it comes from the heart, and I don't apologize for it. Like my dad - for whom I designed the expression during the 2002 PGA Championship, when he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease - I've never met a stranger.
I'm more likely to quote the golfer George Burns than the legendary late comedian by the same name who lived to be 100.
I think I shot 78 one time. My golf game is so overrated.
I love Augusta. I get to cover what I consider to be the best golf tournament of the year, and I really would like to think that one day - God willing, CBS willing - I'd be able to say that I worked 50 Masters.
No matter the event, a Super Bowl, an NFL game, a rank-and-file golf tournament, there is a demand when you are live and exposed to try to get it right and do justice to the event. That's the way I have always approached it.
I have a pretty good memory.
Far and away, the question I'm asked most often is, 'What's your favorite sporting event to call?' I can't say I've ever answered the question well, simply because the three biggest events I broadcast for CBS Sports - the Super Bowl, the NCAA Men's Final Four and the Masters - each are incomparable.
Super Bowl V was the Colts against the Cowboys and Jim O'Brien kicked a 32 yard field goal to beat the Cowboys. I was traumatized by it. Everyone at school knew I was the only Cowboy fan in the area. I didn't want to go to school and I begged and pleaded with my parents. Those are indelible memories when you are a kid.
When Jack Nicklaus won the Masters in 1986, it was mind-blowing. How in the world could a 46-year-old win the Masters?
I think when you have a National Championship Game, a Super Bowl, a Final Four, a World Series, I don't see why there is any reason to pick out one individual as the MVP because it is about a team winning a championship. Maybe that best explains what I believe in at the core in my work as a broadcaster.
I want Alzheimer's. I want Lou Gehrig's disease. I want Parkinson's. I want Huntington's. I want to be the face and voice of all these neurological traumas. I want them all.
I've heard it said that the average person is lucky to have only a handful of true friends in their lifetime. Well, I sincerely feel I've got millions.
For more than a quarter century, I was fortunate to visit and play golf with President George H.W. Bush dozens of times, usually while paying a visit to the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
