Of any of the top names in sports media, Scott Van Pelt is the guy most closely associated with golf who doesn’t already call a major golf tournament.
ESPN plucked him from Golf Channel in 2000, and Van Pelt credits his professional relationship with Tiger Woods during the golf sensation’s rise for his own career taking off.
Throughout the business, Van Pelt is an unofficial spokesperson for the sport. When he talks golf, people listen.
These days, Van Pelt broadcasts Thursday and Friday of The Masters for ESPN. He is a natural candidate to take over the top spot calling golf’s biggest tournament when Jim Nantz hangs it up, though the 65-year-old Nantz has said he wants to keep calling the tournament until its 100th anniversary in 2034.
But in a recent interview on The Varsity podcast, Van Pelt pumped the brakes on anyone at CBS or elsewhere penciling him in as the replacement.
“I don’t have some burning desire to be the one in the tower on 18 on a Sunday,” Van Pelt told host John Ourand. “Frankly, I wouldn’t want to do it, especially after Jim Nantz, because those footprints are too big.”
As with his roles on SportsCenter and Monday Night Countdown and his open interest in collaborating when ESPN begins licensing Inside the NBA, Van Pelt sees himself more as a reporter and anchor than a big-time event announcer.
Calling golf is less intensive than play-by-play for other sports, and Van Pelt could certainly do it. But he prefers being the eyes and ears on the ground over the voice booming through homes across the country.
“Being the person whose job it is to document (golfers), discuss them with our various hosts, analysts, coaches, and players, I really, really enjoy that,” Van Pelt said.
The Augusta National Golf Club famously earns no broadcast revenue from CBS or ESPN. The networks sell ads to cover production costs, but the broadcast is intended to run with limited interruption.
Technically, the tournament’s contract with CBS is year-to-year. But the network has aired the tournament each year since 1956, and that doesn’t appear set to change any time soon.
So Scott Van Pelt replacing Jim Nantz would mean either CBS hiring out the 58-year-old Van Pelt for the event, or ESPN taking over the rights once Nantz retired. Neither seems likely for now, and Van Pelt is getting ahead of all of it to signal that he isn’t interested anyway.