Taylor Zarzour filling in for Mike Tirico as SiriusXM’s lead Masters radio voice in 2026

Taylor Zarzour will serve as SiriusXM’s lead play-by-play voice for the 2026 Masters when the tournament tees off at Augusta National on April 9, stepping in for Mike Tirico, who is taking the year off after a schedule that included calling Super Bowl LX for NBC last month, hosting the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, and carrying the NBA’s return to the network all season on top of his usual Sunday Night Football duties.

According to The Tennessean’s Mike Organ, Tirico called Zarzour from Super Bowl week to tell him personally that it was his turn and that he planned to be back in 2027.

Tirico has been SiriusXM’s Masters voice since 2022. And when he was hired, we noted it was hard to imagine a name with more gravitas for the role, given that he spent the better part of 25 years at Augusta National through his ESPN tenure, gave it up when he moved to NBC in 2016, and used the SiriusXM assignment as a way back in. In a Q&A with Awful Announcing years before that hire, Tirico laid out why golf is the hardest sport to broadcast and why the Masters compounds all of that, especially Augusta National’s famously tight grip on its own broadcast, leaving almost no room for improvisation.

Zarzour has spent four years learning that assignment from inside Tirico’s booth, serving as the backup play-by-play voice since 2022 while also anchoring SiriusXM’s pre- and post-round programming and calling featured group coverage before the live tournament broadcast begins each day. According to The Tennessean, the booth’s structure put Tirico in charge of the final calls, while Zarzour contributed whenever a hole didn’t have a dedicated on-course reporter.

The Titans’ job and the Masters’ assignment are connected through the same small group of people. When Mike Keith left the Tennessee Titans after 26 seasons to take the play-by-play job at the University of Tennessee last year, Zarzour wasn’t sure whether to pursue the opening, so he called Jim Nantz, who lives in Nashville and is embedded in the community around the organization. As Zarzour told Awful Announcing last spring, Nantz immediately told him he had to pursue it, then called the Titans organization directly to advocate for his candidacy.

Zarzour told The Tennessean that he and Nantz are both Nashville residents and joked that he’d accept a ride to Augusta from the Masters’ television voice if the offer came. He’ll call all four rounds from a booth near the 18th green, a course he has been covering in various capacities for 17 years, with Tirico saying he intends to reclaim the role in 2027.