Kevin Kisner apologizes to CBS after scorched-earth Masters broadcast criticism

Kevin Kisner is apologizing to CBS.

Four days after going scorched earth on the network’s Masters broadcast — calling it a “fantasy world,” saying he was “so f*cking confused the entire time,” and texting CBS analyst Colt Knost mid-broadcast to ask if they planned on ever showing a live shot — the NBC golf analyst appeared on Thursday’s Fore Play podcast and walked it back.

“It’s been an interesting few days, but it is what it is, man, and I just have to apologize to the golf team at CBS,” Kisner said. “I crossed the line, probably, too much by talking about that whole content, and I know from my short time in the business how wild production is, right? It’s a very difficult thing to produce a live show and make it all work, and everybody does their best. NBC screws up all the time, and we’re just trying to do our best. I went too far on being critical on ’em. And I just wanted all the people associated with it to know that I apologize.”

CBS’s tightly controlled Masters coverage, which has been perfectly refined over the decades, is usually the gold standard. In fact, earlier this month, Awful Announcing readers gave CBS’s Masters coverage their highest satisfaction rating amongst major sporting events. But, as we detailed in full here, Sunday’s broadcast had genuine problems.

For all intents and purposes, CBS had a rough afternoon, most visibly on 18, where the network lost Rory McIlroy’s approach shot from the woods for nearly a minute — the most important shot of the most important round of the year, gone — with the announcers and production truck both helpless until McIlroy walked into the bunker and found the ball himself. They also lost Cam Young’s second shot on the same hole. Then, when McIlroy drained the putt that won him his second consecutive Masters, CBS was caught with a wide shot from behind him, which left viewers momentarily unsure whether he’d made it.

The broadcast had been running several minutes behind real time all day, ball tracers were misfiring, and the whole thing felt uncharacteristically shaky for a network that has spent decades building its reputation as the gold standard of golf production. Jim Nantz responded earlier this week on The Pat McAfee Show — not directly to Kisner, but the criticism itself — acknowledging “mistakes” while calling his crew “the best in the business” and citing the difficulty of making split-second decisions across 30 hours of live television.

Kisner landed roughly in the same register.

“I was too critical of them,” he conceded.