Jim Nantz may have stepped down last year from his role as lead NCAA Tournament announcer for CBS Sports, but he still plans on calling The Masters for a long time to come.
The face of CBS Sports has been on the broadcast of every Masters since his first one in 1986, that just so happened to coincide with Jack Nicklaus’ famous victory for his sixth and final green jacket. He began hosting the tournament not long after that and has been synonymous with Augusta ever since.
And for a while now, Nantz has been public about when he plans to retire from his role at the 18th tower and Butler Cabin for the most famous golf tournament in the world. And he’s sticking by it.
In an interview with Bunkered, Nantz said that he is still circling the 2036 Masters as his planned final broadcast. It would be the 50th anniversary of his first time broadcasting at Augusta and the 100th Masters Tournament. However, he also did crack the door open to extending his stay in broadcasting beyond that if he feels like he is able to do so.
“But if all the stars aligned, right now, it feels like a pretty good exit point. April 14, 2036. That is my scheduled retirement date. It would be a perfect place to walk out.”
However, Nantz – who was born in Charlotte, just a two-and-a-half hour drive from Augusta – did have a caveat to that.
“I know what’s going to happen,” he added. “I’m going to get to that year, and I’m going to say, ‘You know, maybe I could do this for a while longer.’
“We have broadcasters over here that have gone on well into their 80s, so that’s one of those ‘wait and sees’, I guess.”
Jim Nantz is one of the defining voices of sports in this generation. And his love for The Masters is well known. After stepping away from college basketball this year, he still has the NFL and PGA Tour as part of his broadcast portfolio at CBS Sports. Looking ahead into our own crystal ball, CBS will have Super Bowls in the network rotation in 2028 and 2032. Nantz would be 72 for that later Super Bowl (and 76 for the 2036 Masters), so perhaps that could be a date that he decides to step away from the NFL and spend his last few years covering the PGA Tour leading up to that final Masters tournament.
But as he indicates, it’s a long way into the future to make definitive plans. Who would have thought Al Michaels would still be broadcasting a weekly NFL package in 2025? And for Amazon no less. The Masters is famously on a year-to-year deal with CBS, so maybe Apple will make a trillion dollar offer beginning in 2037 for global rights and insists that Jim Nantz comes along for the ride.
