Hello Friends!
You hear those words before any CBS golf broadcast and you know it’s Jim Nantz, broadcast superstar extraordinaire and distinguished anchor for the long-running CBS team at Augusta National for The Masters.
Nantz, whose deal with the network was nearing expiration, is going nowhere but back to the CBS booth. His contract has been extended and if you want to know how much he earns, well, consider Tony Romo was seeking $17 million a year for his football expertise and Nantz is far more valuable to the network than Romo. So no doubt he could command somewhere near $20 million a year to stay in the booth with Sir Nick Faldo for golf, Romo for the NFL and of course, the NCAA basketball tournament.
Nantz is 61 and wants to be the first sportscaster to call 50 Masters tournaments and that would take him past age 75 in 2035.
“I used to joke around in speaking engagements: I know my retirement date already. God willing, my health stays well, and CBS willing, that April 8, 2035, would be the way I would love to close out my career,” said Nantz, referring to the projected Sunday final round of the 2035 Masters. “But here we are all of a sudden and that’s now well within sight. I’m feeling really young. Got a couple of young kids who are four and six years old. That date is way too close for me to be talking about retirement. So I would like to push it out for another, who knows, several years at least.”
In recent years, the entrepreneurial broadcaster has become involved in several lucrative side businesses. He co-founded a high-end wine label, “The Calling,” with Peter Deutsch, chief executive officer of Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits. He models his own golf apparel collection for Vineyard Vines. But it always comes back to CBS, Augusta National, and the Masters.
And of course, his famous greeting at the start of each broadcast:
“Hello friends.”
See ‘ya next week, Jim.
LPGA Tour Hits Rookie Noh With Hefty Fine:
LPGA Tour rookie Yealimi Noh has gone public with the amount she was fined recently for slow play at last week’s Kia Classic.
How about 10-Large, as in $10,000?
“I can’t appeal because it’s obviously my fault,” she said. “As much as I think about it’s a good learning experience,” Noh said, “obviously now I’m never going to do that again hopefully, which is good. It’s hard to get over; that’s a lot of money.”
It was a money-losing week for Noh. She earned a piddling $4,247 for her tie for 61st.
