Curtis Strange Is Back at Oak Hill, With an ESPN Team That Deserves More Golf

Oak Hill was the site of the highest and lowest points of Strange's career, now he offers trademark honesty during ESPN's coverage.

The 1995 Ryder Cup was my first assignment for Golf World—the dearly departed newsweekly must have sent eight or nine guys to cover the action at Oak Hill that week. Stationed on the 18th green for Sunday’s singles matches, I watched Uncle Sam slowly bleed to death in the final hour, losing three points to par on the closing hole and a three-point lead overall in Europe’s 14 ½-13 ½ victory over the staggered Americans.

There was plenty of blame to be spread and second-guessing ahead, but it was Curtis Strange who would grab the goat’s horns and stick them on his head. “Bogey, bogey, bogey,” he said of his weak finish, which began with him 2 up on Nick Faldo and ended with a 7-foot miss for par. “It’s a frightening thought, what I’m going to feel like tomorrow.”

As the media scrum around him grew larger, Strange continued to handle all inquiries with an uncommon grasp of dignity. His honesty and accountability that afternoon astonished a scribe who had spent 12 years dealing with athletes full of excuses and coaches who responded to pertinent questions with put-downs and profanities. The same guy who had won the 1989 U.S. Open at Oak Hill—the first player in 38 years to successfully defend that title—wasn’t ashamed to admit his failure this time around or expound on the agony that would accompany it.

So that’s what I wrote. A man and his burden, the liability of losing. Two weeks later, I received a handwritten letter from Strange, thanking me for emphasizing the significance of competitive class in a story that ventured far beyond the scorecard. It remains the only note of appreciation sent to me by a professional athlete during my 40 years as a sports journalist.

Strange’s return to Oak Hill this week as a member of ESPN’s broadcast team at the PGA Championship is his first since the loss in ’95. He actually joined ESPN as a tournament analyst that same year, a role that expanded considerably as joint programming responsibilities between the Worldwide Leader and ABC became more frequent in the early 2000s. Disney owns both networks, which has done absolutely nothing to simplify the branding particulars between the two, but the parent company’s perceived lack of interest in televising PGA Tour events on a regular basis makes ABC/ESPN’s complicated relationship somewhat meaningless to avid golf fans.

Streaming isn’t TV. ESPN jumped in with both feet in acquiring the Tour’s internet rights, but that purchase came at a much lower price than the product you see on CBS and NBC, neither of which seems willing to part with any portion of their weekend schedule and the profit that comes with it.

Too bad. Strange, now 68, is a virtual stranger nowadays, limited to calling just eight rounds of action throughout the year—all of it at the year’s first two majors. With Scott Van Pelt hosting ESPN’s coverage, David Duval serving as lead analyst and Strange, Bob Wischusen and Dave Flemming handling four holes apiece, the interaction between the five men is clearly superior to the artificial sweetener dispensed by CBS.

“We know our positions and we all get along,” Strange says of the current lineup. “We also understand that if the whole telecast is good, we all benefit.”

It speaks to the highly competitive edge that defined Strange as a player. He entered TV a bit rough around the edges, his southern drawl doing him no favors in a conventional context, but a seat next to Mike Tirico and a ton of airtime in the heart of the Tiger Woods era led to dramatic improvement. Strange learned how to wrap his thoughts into tidy bundles and became increasingly comfortable with the value of objectivity, which is hardly to suggest he was a cheerleader in the early days.

ABC’s partnership with the Tour ended in 2006, however, relegating Strange to periodic appearances in early-round coverage of big events until ESPN secured full rights to the British Open in 2010. It marked the first time a cable network carried a major championship in its entirety—an eight-year deal on a tournament that historically posted lower ratings than the other majors. Having worked alongside Tirico as ABC’s lead analyst from 1997-2005, Strange happily filled an auxiliary role during the ESPN redux, as Paul Azinger occupied his seat in the booth.

Never had the 18-time Tour winner felt so comfortable wearing a microphone, but it didn’t last. NBC acquired future rights to the British Open (2017 and beyond) in June 2015, turning ESPN into a lame-duck carrier plagued by poor viewership. Not only did the R&A pocket an additional $25 million from NBC by opting out of the final year of its ESPN agreement, it picked up another $25 million when ESPN bailed on the 2016 telecast.

Ah, the TV business. A candy store with snakes in every aisle. “One of the most disappointing things in my career was losing the Open to NBC,” Strange says. “Who else is going to do two or three hours [of pregame coverage] on a Tuesday and Wednesday, talking golf? Who else is going to run updates on SportsCenter at the top of every hour?”

He was a free agent again, so to speak, and with Fox trying to rebound from its lousy start as the U.S. Open rightsholder and former ABC producer Mark Loomis running the show for Club Murdoch, Strange found an old friend in a high place. Loomis wasn’t sure an avid fisherman in his early 60s would want to join his squad as an on-course reporter, but Strange jumped at the chance and turned in the best work of his long, stop-and-start television career.

Following groups in contention and delivering strategical insight played perfectly to his DNA as a tour pro—a guy who won big tournaments on tough courses throughout the 1980s by connecting the dots and avoiding mistakes. “I thoroughly enjoyed being a walker,” he says, “and I wasn’t stuck in a chair for six hours.” Of course, Fox ended its alliance with the USGA long before the contract expired, leaving Strange without steady work once again, which allowed longtime ESPN producer Mike McQuade to hire him for what little golf the network had.

Given the quality and credibility of his current on-air roster, it’s not nearly enough.