NBC’s Johnny Miller has become one of golf’s most prominent television analysts, but that might not have happened if he’d followed through on his plans to quit. Miller is back in California’s Coachella Valley this week after 17 years to call the Career-Builder Challenge on Golf Channel, and that sparked some reminiscing about his first TV broadcast at the same tournament, back in 1990 when it was known as the Bob Hope Desert Classic. As Miller told Tod Leonard of The San Diego Union-Tribune this week, he initially had a tough time making the jump from playing to broadcasting:
“I didn’t know what a teleprompter was, let alone how to use it,” Miller said on the phone as he and the NBC crew prepared for a return to the desert this week, after a 17-year absence, for the Career-Builder Challenge broadcasts on Golf Channel.
“I did my homework. I studied the courses and the players. But I didn’t know what I was doing. After the first day, I said, ‘I think I’m going to take a hike.’
“I told my manager, ‘Tell those guys this is not for me. I’m not an announcer, I’m a player.’ It was a shock to not be teeing it up. That was sort of hard to make that transition.”
It’s a good thing Miller stuck it out, though, as an on-air comment he made a day later led to him shaking up the world of golf:
With Milller’s good friend, Peter Jacobsen, needing birdie on the 18th hole to win and considering a long-iron second shot, over water, from a hanging lie, Miller uttered a word never heard on a golf broadcast: “choke.”
Miller cautioned that this was the kind of shot someone could choke on. He didn’t say Jacobsen was going to choke, but seemingly everyone watching focused on that word.
“The harshest thing an announcer would say in those days was, ‘That’s not what he had in mind,’ “ longtime NBC golf producer Tommy Roy said. “If you’re a viewer, it’s like, no kidding. It took Johnny to step up and use the ‘choke’ word for the first time. It’s become part of the lexicon now.”
Jacobsen pulled off the shot, made birdie and won, while Miller ushered in a new era in golf television. He opened the door for the off-beat musings of Nick Faldo, for comedic analysts such as David Feherty and Gary McCord, and for Brandel Chamblee to chastise the game’s most powerful player, Tiger Woods, if he sees fit.
“I know people were rolling their eyes,” Miller, 68, said. “They’re thinking, ‘Holy mackerel, this guy is going to be the lead analyst?’ The players went, ‘Uh oh.’ The press went crazy with it. … I was saying what people were thinking. It’s the way I talked about my own game, and if I didn’t say it, I wasn’t being myself.”
It is remarkable how much golf analysis has changed from those days. Some still find many of the sport’s commentators overly deferential, but it’s a long way from where it was back when Miller started broadcasting. This is a special week to look back at that, too, as NBC hasn’t broadcast this tournament since 1998. It’s a return to roots for Miller, producer Tommy Roy, anchor Dan Hicks, and on-course analysts Roger Maltbie and Gary Koch. It’s also an opportunity to reflect on Miller’s career, which Roy told Leonard has been essential to NBC being taken seriously as a golf broadcaster:
“He’s been the face of NBC golf,” Roy said. “He’s been everything to us. We wouldn’t have gotten the U.S. Open without Johnny. He helped raise the bar to give us legitimacy as a golf-covering network.”
So, it’s an awfully good thing he didn’t quit after that first day.
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