I can't get people to understand how important the Alzheimer's fight is to me.
— Jim Nantz
When Jack Nicklaus won the Masters in 1986, it was mind-blowing. How in the world could a 46-year-old win the Masters?
My dad had nothing but friends in his life.
I like stories. I like to figure out how history ties to the present.
The sentimentality that people see and hear in my commentary and sometimes ridicule, parody or just don't like - that's okay. We're all wired differently. I think about that a lot. I can't explain it. That's just what runs through my blood. It's just the way I look at the world.
As a storyteller, dates and time equal context.
Every champion golfer comes to Augusta imbued with a towering source of inspiration. It's a solitary journey, but it's one that no player... makes alone.
Augusta National... an oasis of career-defining moments.
They say time heals all wounds, but sometimes you wonder.
George H.W. Bush had perhaps the greatest resume in American history. Director of the CIA, ambassador to the U.N., envoy to China, vice president of the United States and then, of course, president. It's staggering to contemplate one person achieving so much.
When people ask me, 'What are you most proud of,' I say it's that I've had five people close enough to ask me to present them at the World Golf Hall of Fame. There were any number of people they could have used, but they asked me. It really means a lot to me.
I hate whenever there's a social issue that comes up in golf and people in the mainstream media who hate golf and who've conjured up all these stereotypes of people who are in the sport, the way they tear it down... I resent it, and I'll defend golf and people in golf until my dying day.
The dream for me was always the Masters and after my freshman season on the Houston golf team I knew CBS was the only way I'd get there.
I've heard it said that the average person is lucky to have only a handful of true friends in their lifetime. Well, I sincerely feel I've got millions.
People say 'dream big,' that's kind of one of those motivational sayings, but I would dream hard, meaning I just wanted it so badly, I could feel it.
How can we grow the game? It's a conversation in every sport, how do you tap into the millennials? Golf is no different.
Golf is a central part of my life and I look forward to working with the great folks at Vineyard Vines to create an authentic golf apparel brand that speaks to the golfer.
My father got to see the first 10 years of my career. He implored me to always appreciate people who are not operating under any sort of false pretense or who weren't caught up in their own success.
The Masters isn't about Jim Nantz and his storytelling. It's about golf's greatest tournament.
The sport is not about one player, and I say that with a world of respect for his talents on the golf course. But the game is bigger than Tiger Woods.
I try to talk openly from how I feel. People may not agree with it. It may sound foreign to them. That's an uncomfortable position for some people, to be sentimental, nostalgic - it's all kind of the same.
I'm looking at the world through a very positive prism.
I'm more likely to quote the golfer George Burns than the legendary late comedian by the same name who lived to be 100.
The Masters is the one tournament with a timeless quality, where legends are celebrated.
The late, great ABC golf anchor Jim McKay once advised me, 'When you look into the camera, imagine you are talking to one person on the other end.' The next time you hear 'Hello, friends' at the start of a broadcast, just know that I'm channeling my father at that very moment. I see him on the other side of that camera, smiling right back.
Just as many golfers feel a kinship with Ben Hogan or Bobby Jones after studying their lives, such is the closeness I feel with Lawson Little Jr. Little quite simply is the most underappreciated golfer of the first half of the 20th century.
For more than a quarter century, I was fortunate to visit and play golf with President George H.W. Bush dozens of times, usually while paying a visit to the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
As we all know, the concept of the gimme putt is anathema to the PGA Tour.
Jim Murray's greatest writings were golf writings.
My father passed away due to Alzheimer's disease, and many things I do are nods to him.
Hello, friends.' I've had fun with that expression to satisfy the cynics, but it comes from the heart, and I don't apologize for it. Like my dad - for whom I designed the expression during the 2002 PGA Championship, when he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease - I've never met a stranger.
Lance Barrow's a great producer and we work together exceptionally well.
In 2014, when my wife, Courtney, was expecting our daughter and we were contemplating a name, I said, 'How about Finley?' Only after Courtney said that she loved the name did I reveal that it was inspired by an aspect of Samuel Finley Brown Morse.
I call golf with my head and my heart. I don't have any notes in front of me - it's different from basketball and football in that feel.
I was named first-team Jersey Shore by the Asbury Park Press, the paper I used to deliver as a young boy. I got to Houston and Coach Williams invited me to walk on the golf team. I was the 18th man on an 18-man golf team.
I love Augusta. I get to cover what I consider to be the best golf tournament of the year, and I really would like to think that one day - God willing, CBS willing - I'd be able to say that I worked 50 Masters.
One of Tiger's trademarks in his prime was his ability to fight for every stroke.
I don't like scripts.
From 1975-'79, I worked for PGA professional Tony Bruno. For five years I watched, lost in admiration, as Tony ran the golf shop at Battleground Country Club in Manalapan, N.J. Tony put in 80-hour weeks doing what nearly 29,000 men and women club pros do every day: Keeping the game alive with a smile.
I don't like hot takes any more than I like hot cakes.
Since 1934 every accomplished player in golf has come to the Augusta National looking for an introduction into history.
In 2011, my wife, Courtney, and I, with my amazing mother and sister, opened the Nantz National Alzheimer Center at Houston Methodist Hospital.
On June 3, 2015, in keeping with a long tradition, I visited my home club in the Pepper Pike suburb of Cleveland, known simply as The Country Club. It's an old William Flynn design and perhaps the most underrated course in America. It's elegant, challenging and filled with old-world charm.
As a teenager, Tiger was self-assured and mature, yet also warm and charming. But the warm outward veneer gradually changed. When he pulled off his 'win for the ages' at the 1997 Masters, he already was sharing less of his softer, emotional side.
Nothing in golf is certain, especially on the PGA Tour.
I can't think of anything in my profession that would mean as much. You can talk about Emmys or Super Bowls. Fifty Masters Tournaments, that would be the ultimate.
Alzheimer's is such an insidious disease.
I was just overcome with the idea that one day I wanted to be one of those voices at the Masters and work for CBS and cover the NFL.
We want the game to be attractive to a new audience, but you have to be careful because there are certain traditions this game upholds. Silence over the swing, that's always been there. That's not understood by those who don't play golf.
Far and away, the question I'm asked most often is, 'What's your favorite sporting event to call?' I can't say I've ever answered the question well, simply because the three biggest events I broadcast for CBS Sports - the Super Bowl, the NCAA Men's Final Four and the Masters - each are incomparable.
