Kevin Kisner, Keith Mitchell, Smylie Kaufman enjoy NBC Happy Hour coverage.
GolfNBCBy Awful Announcing Staff on

Professional golf is at a crossroads where the sport has to look at themselves in the mirror and figure out how to overcome the troubles that have plagued it in the last two years. Golf has been torn apart by the creation of LIV and defection of major stars from the PGA Tour to accepting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Saudi Arabian government to be part of their sportswashing initiative.

In response, the PGA Tour has upped the ante for their own purses by exponential amounts and established themselves as a for-profit business in the guise of keeping players happy and making everyone more money. The naked pursuit of power, money, and influence has many within the sport questioning when exactly golf is going to start serving fans in addition to their own bank accounts. Rory McIlroy, often the voice of reason, has argued that golf needs to rethink the way they do business to put fans first.

Thankfully, golf’s television partners are starting to shake things up and make things more fun.

CBS and NBC have instituted a few things to make broadcasts fun and more fan-friendly. One new thing this year is the “Happy Hour” on NBC’s Friday coverage which is anchored by on-course reporter Smylie Kaufman and rotating guest analyst Kevin Kisner. Kaufman and Kisner are free to joke and banter with each other with a much more lighthearted attitude than what you would normally see on a golf telecast.

On Friday, Kaufman and Kisner were at the famed island green on Hole #17 at TPC Sawgrass for the Players Championship. They were joined by Keith Mitchell, who was in the clubhouse at -4 and ready to play the weekend, and later British Open Champion Brian Harman. The fun started immediately when Mitchell’s eruption from last year’s tournament was meticulously analyzed.

Guests also popped in briefly while playing the 17th, which included Emiliano Grillo stopping to pour water down Kaufman’s back and the continuation of Mitchell’s adorable bromance with Sungjae Im.

Everyone seemingly loved the Happy Hour portion of the telecast as fans were in love with not just Kisner and Kaufman’s chemistry, but also Mitchell’s contributions to the festivities as an active player. Even the other commentators on NBC’s broadcast seemed to loosen up during the Happy Hour, from Dan Hicks to returning analyst Gary Koch.

Well… not everyone loved the coverage. In a tweet, longtime CBS Sports golf reporter Peter Kostis criticized the coverage for focusing too much on the announcers “yukking it up” and taking the attention off the play. Kostis was an institution as part of CBS’s golf coverage for decades but was let go after the 2019 season.

Maybe Kostis is still stuck back in a time when golf coverage was more staid and stoic and it was enough excitement to see the Konica Minolta swing vision camera. That’s all well and good, but the PGA Tour needs these changes to stay relevant and actually reach new fans, especially at a time when Tiger Woods is in the dim twilight of his career.

And if anything, seeing a guy like Keith Mitchell unwind, tell jokes, and display a great personality will make him way more fans than any generic golf coverage showing a few shots of his during a tournament. It’s why golf has invested fully in Full Swing in a way that the tennis tours did not. And, if fans are having fun watching golf.. maybe they will tune in even more!

It’s a novel concept, but it’s crazy enough that it just might work. That and showing fewer commercials.