Coverage From Augusta National Golf Club Begins Today at 2 p.m. ET; Primetime Coverage Every Night on GOLF Channel and Peacock

Transcript – Live From Commentators Rich Lerner, Brandel Chamblee, Notah Begay III and Johnson Wagner

“The person who’s under the most mental duress at the Masters is Rory…he plays his best when it means the least, and he plays his worst when it means the most.” – Brandel Chamblee on Rory McIlroy

“You have to go back to the Tiger Woods days to find a player who’s dominated the PGA TOUR the way Scottie Scheffler has.” – Chamblee

Live From Features Include Rich Lerner on Scottie Scheffler, Ryan Lavner on Viktor Hovland, and Kira K. Dixon on Will Zalatoris

STAMFORD, Conn. – April 8, 2024 – Golf Central Live From The Masters surrounds the 2024 Masters with more than 50 hours of studio coverage on GOLF Channel and Peacock from Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., this week, beginning today at 2 p.m. ET.

Nearly 20 hosts, analysts and reporters will contribute to this week’s comprehensive studio coverage, highlighted by the Live From The Masters primetime team of host Rich Lerner and analysts Brandel Chamblee and Paul McGinley.

In addition to 50+ hours of live coverage, encore presentations of Live From the Masters will air on GOLF Channel following live telecasts each evening.

Live From The Masters Broadcast Team

• • Hosts: Rich Lerner / Mike Tirico / Steve Sands / Anna Jackson / Damon Hack
  • Analysts: Brandel Chamblee / Paul McGinley / Brad Faxon / Notah Begay III / Paige Mackenzie / Johnson Wagner / Arron Oberholser
  • Reporters/Contributors: Todd Lewis / Rex Hoggard / Ryan Lavner / Damon Hack / Jamie Diaz / Eamon Lynch / George Savaricas / Kira K. Dixon / Jay Croucher

Live From will include a variety of features surrounding this year’s Masters tournament, including:

• • Scottie Scheffler – Rich Lerner breaks down the dominance of Scottie Scheffler in 2024 as he aims to win his second green jacket;
  • Will Zalatoris – Kira K. Dixon examines how major championships have been a driving force for Zalatoris since his childhood and through his recent back injury;
  • Viktor Hovland – Ryan Lavner looks at the 2023 FedExCup Champion as he continues his pursuit of his first major championship;
  • Ludvig Åberg – Rich Lerner discusses one of the most highly-touted young players on the PGA TOUR who makes his major championship debut this week at Augusta.

RICH LERNER, BRANDEL CHAMBLEE, NOTAH BEGAY III AND JOHNSON WAGNER PREVIEW THE MASTERS

Last week, Live From The Masters commentators Rich Lerner, Brandel Chamblee, Notah Begay III and Johnson Wagner previewed the upcoming 2024 Masters on a media conference call. Following are highlights from the call. Click here for a full transcript.

Chamblee on Rory McIlroy: “The person who’s under the most mental duress at the Masters is Rory. You go back and you look, and there’s a pattern…his last five Masters, he’s averaged 73.8 in the first round. That speaks to not being in the right place mentally. He plays his best when it means the least, and he plays his worst when it means the most. We can dive in and parse out technical reasons why that is, but the larger landscape is it’s just mental.”

Chamblee on McIlroy: “His golf swing is just so — it’s beautiful, no doubt – but it’s such an odd fit for Augusta…the game is better when Rory is playing his best. It’s more exciting. That’s arguably the most exciting — don’t count Tiger, but outside of Tiger – that’s the most exciting story in all of golf. If Rory drives it down No. 1 on the first day and he’s got a huge hook lie and he hits a soft cut 10 feet beneath the hole, I’ll go, ‘game on.’ But if he hits it 30 feet left of the hole above the hole, I’m like, ‘here we go again.’ So I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Lerner on Scottie Scheffler: “You don’t worry about Scottie Scheffler as a player and as a person. If Scottie were your doctor, if he were your kid’s high school basketball coach, you would feel good. The not-quite-reliable putting makes him not quite a lock to win, though I think we would all agree he is a lock to contend.”

Chamblee on Scheffler: “You have to go back to the Tiger Woods days to find a player who’s dominated the PGA TOUR the way Scottie Scheffler is and who arrives there with every facet of his game, the most important facets of his game needed to win the Masters. Nobody has even come close to having them in the order, not even Tiger Woods, in the order that Scottie Scheffler has them. The most important parts of winning the Masters are approach play and scrambling. Well, he’s first in approach play, and he’s fourth in scrambling. You add those two numbers together, that’s five. Nobody has come in there with anything less than 20. What we’re looking at here is, on the one hand, yeah, the odds are better that it’s going to be wide open, but on the other, it’s easy to see a Scottie Scheffler blowout.”

Begay III on Tiger Woods: “He’s got zero mobility in that left ankle and really has some low back challenges now, which he knew he was going to have. After the ankle surgery I had a chance to visit with him when (his son) Charlie was playing in my junior golf event in Louisiana, and he said, ‘My ankle doesn’t move, so something is going to take the stress. The stress is going to transfer somewhere else. I don’t know where it’s going to be, but it might be my knee, it might be my hip,’ and it ended up being his low back. He can play the golf, and we always knew the question mark was going to be can he walk the 72, that’s still up in the air, but can he recover from one round to the next. That’s the biggest question that I really don’t know and he’s not going to know, either, until he gets out there and figures out if the way he’s prepared for this year’s Masters is going to work for him.”

Chamblee on Jon Rahm: “Rahm just has everything in spades. There hasn’t really been his equal in terms of driving it long and straight since maybe (Jack) Nicklaus. It’s just extraordinary to watch him. He has the necessary move being able to hit cuts off hook lies. He can hit towering iron shots. He doesn’t swing left. There’s such a huge movement to swing left. There’s a fine line between swinging out, swinging down the line and swinging left. They just don’t come along like him very often. He’s so competitive, and I’m sure he feels like he’s got an axe to grind.”

Wagner on Will Zalatoris: “I watched him pretty closely at THE PLAYERS Championship and a little bit on Bay Hill, and one thing that makes me very excited about him is that he is still hitting his irons as high as he did before. I don’t think he gets enough credit for how imaginative and creative he is with a wedge in his hand around the greens. I know the putter is always going to be an issue, but I think he’s got exceptional touch, and his iron play is exquisite, and I think he is back pain-free. I’m not picking him to win, but he is definitely going to be in the top 5 for me.”

Begay III on Justin Thomas and caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay parting ways: “Terrible timing. Anytime you have to walk away from a trusted relationship — the premise of a caddie-player relationship is predicated on trust. You’re trusting somebody to interject their opinion into critical decisions, especially around a place where your attitude can either enhance your chances or end your chances of winning the golf tournament. For Justin, it obviously has to be the right choice because things just weren’t going his way. He had the third single worst strokes gained putting round in that third round at Valspar. That’s certainly not a reflection on the caddie, but maybe just a new look, a new feel, a little new energy might sort of get things moving in the right direction. I don’t think it’s an overall solution to bad play. Sometimes it does help get things moving back in a place that you feel like you can put up some decent scores.”

–NBC SPORTS–