Legendary broadcaster Verne Lundquist to call final Masters in 2024

Late one gorgeous April Sunday in Augusta, Ga., Tiger Woods stood on the cusp of golf immortality. Huddled in a small green tent just a few feet over Woods’ head, Verne Lundquist did the same.

Below Lundquist’s perch on the 16th hole at Augusta National, Woods’ focus lengthened. He was clinging to a late lead at the Masters, deadlocked in a duel with the suddenly hard-charging journeyman Chris DiMarco, and even the most casual observer could tell you that the tournament hung in the balance of his forthcoming greenside chip. Woods was in jail, his ball snugly between the first and second cuts on the wrong side of the putting surface’s wicked ridge line. Lanny Wadkins, Lundquist’s CBS colleague, saw the result of Woods’ overcooked tee shot and came to the assessment any sane person staring at the same chip shot from the same angle in the same circumstances would reach: Tiger was screwed.

“There’s a good chance he doesn’t get this inside this inside the mark of [DiMarco’s] ball,” Wadkins scoffed.

You know the rest. A perfect chip. A brief pause of the ball on the edge of the hole. And then … chaos.

Woods exploded. The crowd exploded. Lundquist exploded.

“Oh … my … goodness… OH WOW! … In your LIFE have you ever seen anything like that?”

Woods had made the shot of his Masters life, and Lundquist had made the call of his.

Lundquist has numerous significant memories from his forty-year tenure as the Masters commentator for CBS. However, it is intriguing how Tiger and Verne always seem to intersect in historical moments.  

Consequently, it seems appropriate that CBS chose Wednesday, the day Woods will hold his first press conference of the year, to disclose Lundquist’s retirement, marking the end of his remarkable career at Augusta National after the 40th Masters in April.   

Lundquist, who has been the commentator for almost every Masters tournament since 1983, has become a tradition in himself.   His voice is regarded as a comforting aspect of golf’s prestigious first major, especially since he retired from CBS’s SEC coverage.  

It is difficult to fathom a world where Lundquist will no longer grace America’s living rooms during the second week of April. It is even more peculiar to envision a world where, after serving as CBS’s go-to announcer for four decades, Lundquist’s voice may no longer be heard at any significant sporting event throughout the year. 

Still, the end of Lundquist’s tenure is not a surprise. Now 84, he has let slip on a few occasions in recent years that his Masters career was nearing its conclusion.

“Sean [McManus, CBS Sports chairman]) and I had a recent talk about my work at Augusta,” Lundquist said in a 2022 interview. “I’m good to go for next year. That will be number 39, and he and I have agreed — and this is not announced and I don’t mean to jump the gun here — but in all likelihood, number 40 will likely be my last. Just because it will be time. I think that’s the plan.”

If this is the end for Lundquist, the 16th hole at Augusta National is a fitting location for a retirement party. He is perhaps best known to golf fans for his work every April in the small green tent perched above the par-3 (called the “16th hole tower” by CBS and Augusta National without a hint of hyperbole). From the beginning, the 16th was the perfect match for Lundquist, tying one of sports television’s most avuncular figures to one of Augusta National’s most dramatic holes. At a tournament known for decorum, the short par-3 has played an unusually boisterous role over the decades as a frequent site of both triumph and turmoil, and Lundquist has played an unusually memorable role in documenting it.

The most notable of all Lundquist’s Masters moments came in 2005, when he delivered the most-replayed call of his golf broadcasting career on Woods’ last-oscillation chip-in to seize the green jacket.

To the sports TV purist, there is some irony in that call becoming a famed piece of golf history. There is no wordplay in Lundquist’s language, no clever quip to meet the moment — hell, if you were turned away from the TV, you’d have a hard time knowing what sport you were watching. The same could be said of any number of Lundquist’s calls across other sports, a compendium of “oohs” and “aahs” that eschew even the most liberal interpretation of sports TV broadcaster rules. And yet if you were to pick the 10 best sports TV moments of the millennium, there is little doubt that “In your LIFE?!” would be among them.

This, in the simplest terms, is Lundquist’s superpower: It’s not so much what he’s saying, it’s how he’s saying it.

“Honest to god, all I was doing was reacting to what I saw in front of me,” Lundquist said years later of the Tiger chip-in. “I was reacting as if I was someone watching in the sports bar or in his or her living room.”

At the core of Lundquist’s genius is the first rule of sports broadcasting: consider the listener. In a job plagued by dulcet voices with empty polish, Lundquist has dared to show the audience his truest, most substantive self, even if that version occasionally distends into a chorus of noises that sounds only vaguely like English. His broadcast artistry may be Jackson Pollock, but his effect is undeniably Rockwellian.

“  In 2016, Gary McCord, a former CBS colleague of Lundquist, described him as a source of comfort and relaxation for everyone.   He likened Lundquist to a cozy couch, with a shawl enveloping you, allowing you to unwind and enjoy the captivating experience of television.

However, it would be prudent for you to not confuse Lundquist’s soothing voice with shallowness.  

He departs from the sports TV sector as one of its most proficient conveyers of messages – a person who experienced the bliss and compassion of sports so genuinely that he managed to persuade us to experience it as well.   Though there may be other broadcasters with superior vocabulary, none possess a greater sense of passion.   

If you want an example of a memorable Masters Sunday, you need to look no further than 2019. It had been 14 years since the famous “in your LIFE?!” moment, yet the key players remained the same.   However, the narrative was vastly different.  

Tiger Woods had faced heartbreak, personal struggles, injuries, and public humiliation over the years.  

But on that Sunday afternoon, he found himself in a position reminiscent of the 2005 tournament, leading late and striving for golf greatness.   Jim Lundquist, as usual, was situated in the small green tent.

This time, though, the thought of a Woods victory seemed not inevitable but impossible. The years had shown the cold-blooded terminator to be a mere mortal, one who carried the weight of scandal and an increasingly brittle frame. The world had left him for dead several times before he surged into contention. By the time Woods reached the 16th tee with the lead, not even the professional talkers had words.

Woods struck one of the shots of the tournament, a picture-perfect approach into the green’s ridge line that gravity coaxed back toward the flagstick. His ball came to rest a few feet from the hole, leaving a kick-in for a tournament-clinching birdie. Moments later, Woods poured in the putt.

He exploded. The crowd exploded. But this time, Lundquist didn’t.

  Sitting on his elevated position, the announcer remained silent as chaos erupted beneath him.   He patiently awaited for a brief moment, allowing the enthusiastic applause to subside and the golf course to become less crowded.   A dose of realness washed over the spectators watching at home: Tiger Woods was on the verge of claiming victory at the Masters tournament.