PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. — Before he was a golf analyst, Peter Kostis was a golf teacher.
He made the slow-mo swing analysis on CBS – officially the Konika-Minolta Biz Hub Swing Vision camera – a staple of the TV coverage but he was only able to let that shine because of his background as a golf instructor. Years of working with a variety of tour pros sharpened his eye and that proved invaluable on the air when you needed to make quick decisions.
“What he did was, when you’re teaching live, you gotta pick something out that that guy just did in a nanosecond,” said longtime CBS colleague and friend Gary McCord. “Then they throw it right back to you and you’re communicating now with the guys in truck and it’s like ‘Watch this, this is what he’s doing, this is why he’s hanging it to the right’, and you gotta do it (snaps fingers) that fast. You gotta do it succinctly. Your picture’s gotta be painted in two seconds and he was brilliant at that, brilliant at reading a guy’s golf swing and finding out why he’s going good or why he’s going bad.”
The duo were both let go by CBS near the end of 2019, their contracts not renewed by the network. They have since started their own YouTube channel called Kostis and McCord: Off their rockers.
Kostis, 76, was one of four people inducted into the Arizona Golf Hall of Fame Class of 2023 earlier this week at Paradise Valley Country Club.
Prior to the shindig, he chatted with Golfweek. Here’s the Q&A.
How does this feel, being inducted into the Hall?
PK: It’s kinda weird, you know, it’s …. (pauses).
GWK: Why is it weird?
PK: I don’t feel like I’ve done anything unique to deserve this. I’m very honored by it and humbled by it and I’m very appreciative of it. My ego is such that when you’re a teacher, if you want to be a good teacher, you check your ego at the door and you worry about your students. That’s what I’ve done for 50 years, so my ego didn’t see this coming. No way, no how. I’m very appreciative and I’m going to enjoy it.
Do you remember meeting and working with Gary McCord for the first time?
PK: In 1989, USA bought the rights to the Ryder Cup and they put together a rag-tag team of announcers. Jim Simpson, who played the role of Jim Nantz, and then Gary [McCord] and Ben Wright, so we had one American, one Brit. And they needed someone on the ground and I was already going to be over there because I had players on both sides that I was coaching, so they asked me if I wanted to do it. So that was my first foray into broadcast television.
GWK: Was it scary going on TV that first time?
PK: No coaching, no nothing. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. We had a great time. USA Network then hired me to be their lead analyst. They were ramping up, they started early-round coverage [of the PGA Tour]. Up until then there really wasn’t much. CBS liked what I did, they hired me.
Ever count up the number of countries you've visited?
PK: I have taught, played, done television probably in over 30 or 40 countries.
GWK: What’s been most rewarding? The teaching or the television work?
PK: Well, I’ve always been a teacher. I always tell people, even when I was broadcasting, my mindset was that I was teaching with a microphone. That was my approach. Frank Chirkinian, who was the godfather of golf on TV, when he hired me, he said “Look, I didn’t hire you to be funny. You’re not funny. I got McCord and Wright for that. I want you to be smart. That’s what you are. You do your thing.” And that’s why we were so good together, because everybody brought something different to the table. As an emsemble we were pretty good. And so, I got CBS come up with the slo-mo camera, which luckily was sponsored by Konika-Minolta. I could do my teaching in a broad sense, with a microphone.
GWK: Ever feel like you messed up live on the air?
PK: Oh, s – – t yea.
Name some of the best shots you ever saw.
PK: There was one time at Colonial, Mickelson hit it way left on 18. I walked in there, looked at the lie, looked at the trees, looked at the green and I was going to tell Nantz in the tower that he had no shot. I mean, zero. None. Whatsoever. I saw no opening and I’m usually pretty good at figuring out possibilities, given certain guy’s games and whatnot. And then they went away to another hole, came back and Mickelson had hit a lob wedge probably 150 yards, up in the air, over the tree onto the green. He walked right over to me and says “You didn’t call that, did you?”
GWK: What are some other memorable ones that you saw live in person that you just couldn’t believe?
PK: There’s so many. The greatest golf shot I’ve ever seen wasn’t on TV, never made it on TV. There’s no video footage of it. It was Seve Ballesteros in 1983 at the Ryder Cup at PGA National. He’s playing Fuzzy Zoeller. Long story short, he hit a 3-wood out of a fairway bunker, 235-40 yards to the green and he couldn’t hit it over the lip because the lip probably required a 7-iron, so he aimed it 45-50 yards left, hit a big old high slice to about 20 feet. It was, that was old equipment, old golf balls, everything. That was singularly the best shot I’ve ever seen.
GWK: What’s your favorite Tiger shot you saw, not on TV but with your own eyes?
PK: He hit a wedge out of foot-long rough at Firestone on 18, it was like ‘that’s a chip out’ but he hit it up over a tree and got it on the green. He hit a 3-iron in Minneapolis at Hazeltine. Ball below his feet in a bunker. Hit it probably 225 yards up onto the green. There’s so many of them, it’s hard to pick one.
Do you like what you see when you watch golf on television?
PK: Nope.
GWK: Do you like what you see when you watch live-streaming LIV?
PK: Nope.
GWK: Is it too much talking? Too many graphics? Not enough analysis?
PK: How many announcers do you need to describe one shot? CBS has three on the ground, they got a guy in the tower, they got another analyst in the 18th tower, they got Jim Nantz. And so at a minimum there’s three announcers on every shot and they’re all trying to get in because they want their air-time and it ruins the flow of the show, in my opinion. I’m not going to mention names, but they just don’t need that many announcers, in my opinion. And plus with the number of commercials and sponsored segments and whatnot, it’s too cluttered. The whole thing is too cluttered.
GWK: What do you think about the number of commercial breaks?
PK: That’s the Tour’s fault. That’s not the network’s fault. The Tour charges x amount for the rights fees and they bump em up, bump em up, bump em up. The networks want golf. How they gonna justify spending what they’re spending. They gotta pay for it. They’ve got a board to respond to, they got shareholders, they got everything. They gotta get the money back somehow so you get it through commercials.
GWK: What about things like, ‘the final hour is commercial-free brought to you by, say, Rolex?’
PK: Most people have turned it off by then. They’re sick of the commercials. The whole thing is too cluttered. It’s propaganda. The Tour has managed to get rid of some voices that were honest, shall I say, and replaced them with cheerleaders, former Tour players and whatnot. But the Tour gets what the Tour wants.
I’m glad I had my run when I had it. Gary and I worked in what I consider to be the Golden Age of golf on television. We had fun, it was entertaining, informative. It wasn’t laden down with a bunch of commercials, a bunch of promos, sponsored segments.
LIV Golf is good or bad for professional golf?
PK: Ultimately I think it’ll be good. Just because it’s not for everybody doesn’t mean it’s not for nobody. I’m really upset at the way Jay Monahan, in particular, responded to this whole thing and created all this vitriol and moral superiority and the abuse that the players took. As a professional golfer, by definition, you play for money, right? That’s what professional means. So when someone comes in and offers to put millions of dollars into the game of golf, you don’t take their phone call, I got a hard time dealing with that. I’m not saying how it would’ve worked out. It’s the kind of thing that I don’t think the players have deserved the abuse they got for going. I don’t think that the anger that’s been created in the golf community is going away for a while, so we’ll see.
GWK: Can the PGA Tour and LIV co-exist?
PK: There’s no reason why they can’t. What right does the PGA Tour have to monopolize professional golf in the world? They could’ve gotten together and hammered something out.
GWK: Do you think they will?
PK: That’s a question to be determined. There’s rumors about the Tour going elsewhere for financing and whatnot. It’s a difficult situation. But I don’t think it needed to be this way.
