Even at the Masters, McCord Can’t Take Golf Very Seriously

A caller from Los Angeles, trying to reach CBS golf commentator Gary McCord in Augusta, Ga., got this greeting from a woman who answered the phone: “The White House.”

“That was my wife,” McCord said. “She’s nuts. The people who own the home we’re staying at here are named White, so that’s how she’s been answering the phone.”

Craziness must run in the family. McCord has done so many crazy things since joining CBS in 1985 that he keeps a running tab of the number of times he has almost been fired by longtime golf producer Frank Chirkinian.

“It’s well over 20 now,” McCord said. “I’ve always begged my way back on the air.”

Maybe the maddest Chirkinian has ever been was at the 1988 Doral Open in Miami.

McCord went to a local Toys R Us store and returned to the Doral Country Club with a bag full of noisemakers.

“If you use any of that stuff on the air, I will kill you and then fire you,” Chirkinian warned.

McCord couldn’t resist. Just before Lennie Clements’ chip shot came up short of the 14th green, out came the slide whistle.

“It was perfect,” McCord said. “I blew out when the shot went into the air and pulled it in when the shot came down.”

The whole crew broke up. Except Chirkinian.

After the laughter died down, McCord heard on his headset: “McCord, I want to see you . . . now !”

McCord’s irreverent style is refreshing for a staid sport, particularly at the Masters, where the stuffed-shirts prefer the announcers to play it straight.

Years ago, when Jack Whitaker, then at CBS, referred to the Augusta crowd as a “mob,” the network was told not to bring him back. And obediently, CBS didn’t.

All McCord does is inject some humor into a sport in dire need of it. He gets away with such shenanigans because he’s basically harmless.

He’s sort of the Bob Uecker of golf.

“The difference is Uecker only played baseball for about five years,” McCord said. “I’ve been dismal at golf for 17 or 18.”

McCord, 42, and already a grandfather of two by a previous marriage, still plays in a few tournaments a year. He’s still looking for his first PGA Tour victory.

Don’t tell anybody, but he won a Ben Hogan tournament in Ft. Myers, Fla., two weeks ago at 11 under par.

“If that gets out, I’m ruined,” McCord said.

McCord, like Uecker, has made a career out of making fun of himself.

“There are 23 million golfers in this country, and most of them are bad,” he said. “I’m just one of them.”

Actually, McCord is better than most. He was the Division II national champion at UC Riverside in 1970 and twice, in 1975 and ‘77, finished second in the Milwaukee Open.

As a kid in Garden Grove, McCord dreamed of becoming a baseball pitcher.

“I blew out my arm throwing junk,” he said. “My arm was so bad that when I was in high school, I’d raise it in class and it would pop out of the socket.”

McCord’s family moved to Riverside when he was 15, and he took up golf, playing at Ramona High, Riverside City College and UC Riverside. He joined the PGA Tour in 1973.

In 1985, he was at a low point. He missed the cut at the Colonial tournament in Ft. Worth, and was on a flight to Columbus, Ohio, for the Memorial, even though he didn’t have enough money to cover his expenses.

He spotted Chirkinian on the flight and asked him for a job as a gofer.

“I was dead broke and willing to do anything,” he said. “Even if it was just, ‘Hey, McCord, go get a cup of coffee.’ All I asked for was room and board.”

After considerable pestering, Chirkinian finally acquiesced.

“He told me to check into the Stouffer Hotel, come to the course and go out to the 16th hole,” McCord said. “Verne Lundquist was there and gave me a headset. After about 20 minutes rehearsal, we were on the air.

“Lundquist said, ‘We’ve got a guest commentator, Gary McCord, with us this week.’ ”

And he’s been with them ever since.

Peter Rogot, 37, was less than a week away from his debut as an ESPN SportsCenter anchorman when he collapsed at the ESPN studios in Bristol, Conn., and died less than two hours later Tuesday night.

Rogot, a native of New York and a 1974 Wisconsin graduate, had been a sportscaster at KCNC-TV in Denver since 1981 and, before that, a news co-anchorman at KJEO-TV in Fresno for four years.

He was going through orientation this week and was scheduled to make his on-air debut at ESPN Monday.

Doctors say he died of natural causes. He is survived by his wife, Mary, and his parents, Arthur and Eileen Rogot of Whitestone, N.Y.

TV-Radio Notes

This is the 36th consecutive year CBS has televised the Masters. The network has covered all 18 holes annually since 1984. . . . Jim Nantz is the host of this year’s coverage. Besides Gary McCord, who will be stationed at the 14th hole, the commentators will be Pat Summerall and Ken Venturi (18th hole), Verne Lundquist (17th), Ben Wright (15th and 16th), Tom Weiskopf (13th), Steve Melnyk (11th and 12th) and Bob Murphy (10th). . . . Before CBS takes over this weekend, today’s second round will be televised on the USA network at 1 p.m. and repeated at 9 p.m. USA uses CBS’ announcers. Highlights will be on CBS at 11:30 p.m. . . . KNX is carrying CBS Radio’s Masters coverage, with reports at 15 and 45 minutes past the hour, beginning at 11:45 a.m. today, 1:15 p.m. Saturday and 9:45 a.m. Sunday.

KMPC’s Paul Olden will move from UCLA to the Rams, replacing Eddie Doucette. Ram commentator Jack Youngblood will return. A likely candidate to replace Olden on UCLA is John Rebenstorf, last year’s commentator, who is also a capable play-by-play announcer. . . . KFOX-FM in Redondo Beach is switching to a Korean language format, so Larry Kahn and Mike Lamb, deciding not to learn a new language, are taking their sports talk show to KORG in Anaheim. They will be on weekdays, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., beginning Monday.

With the Dodgers’ home opener today, KABC’s Ken Minyard and Roger Barkley will be doing their 5-9 a.m. show from home plate at Dodger Stadium. Among their guests will be Desert Storm serviceman Nick Lozenich, who drew attention when, during an ABC News segment, he expressed his dreams of someday playing professional baseball, as he idly hit rocks with an ax handle. . . . Other guests on the “Ken and Barkley Co.” will include Steve Garvey, Jay Johnstone and Tom Lasorda. . . . Today’s 1 p.m. game against the San Diego Padres will be televised, delayed, at 5 p.m. PDT, by Armed Forces Television. The telecast will reach more than 1.5 million service personnel in more than 130 countries, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A videotape of the game will be delivered on the same day to 160 U.S. ships.

It was nice to see Scott St. James back on the air with sports news on Channel 4 the past two Saturdays. He will be on again this Saturday and will do some reporting next week as well. But St. James said nothing is definite beyond that. . . . Vacationing Fred Roggin returns to Channel 4 Monday. . . . “Greatest Sports Legends,” the longest-running syndicated sports show, begins its 18th season this weekend with a segment on Paul Warfield on Channel 7 at 1:30 p.m.

Sunday’s Long Beach Grand Prix, televised by ABC, will be blacked out in Los Angeles and shown next Saturday at 1 p.m. . . . George Foreman and Evander Holyfield, who will fight next Friday at Atlantic City, N.J., will appear on Saturday’s “Wide World of Sports,” which, among other things, will also show the Mark Spitz-Tom Jager match race at Mission Viejo. . . . He’s everywhere: NBC’s Joel Meyers will be the courtside reporter at Saturday’s 12:30 p.m. Laker-Portland telecast, and at 3 p.m. he will be announcing NBC’s taped coverage of the Grand Prix of Miami. Also, Meyers will be the reporter at Sunday’s San Antonio Spurs-Phoenix Suns game, the second half of an NBC doubleheader. . . . King announcers Bob Miller and Jim Fox have been in playoff form. Miller is simply the best hockey announcer in the business, and Fox, a rookie, has shown a lot of improvement.