Jim Nantz, Trevor Immelman and CBS execs weigh in on Justin Thomas' TV memo

Jim Nantz is prepping to do double duty this week from Kansas City, where he will broadcast the final round of the Farmers Insurance Open (being played in San Diego) on Saturday and call the AFC Championship game from Arrowhead Stadium between the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills on Sunday. Yet he still had time to hop on a Zoom call with colleagues and already had seen the letter that the PGA Tour’s Justin Thomas had sent to his fellow players imploring them to be more open and accessible to the Tour’s broadcast partners.

“Justin Thomas did the broadcast partners a big favor and as a result, he did something that was a gift to the viewer,” he said. “Because I do believe it will help create change and more participants in what we're looking for…So good on JT, good for all of us.”

He added, “People want to know about what's going through the players' mind and what are they really like? They can help tell their own story now. We have been commissioned through the years to tell their story. It's a great responsibility, one we don't take lightly all of us on this CBS golf team. But who better than the player themselves to tell us how big their heart is and what they're feeling at pivotal moments.”

It was an opinion shared universally by his TV colleagues. CBS begins its broadcast season this week with the Farmers Insurance Open, the first of 19 tournaments to be broadcast on The Eye this year. Coming off a season in which ratings took a serious hit – Sports Business Journal reported a drop of 20 percent – it's more important than ever the pros go out of their way to help make the TV broadcast the best they can be. David Berson, president and CEO of CBS Sports, said it was critical to hear from a player, especially one of Thomas’s stature who is a major winner and a former world No. 1.

“They've been hearing it from us for a long time,” Berson said. “It's been beneficial with other sports with a lot of behind the scenes content and this sport, you see their faces, you spend time with them. It's several hours. There's time to engage. They can have personal endorsements. It's different than in other sports. There's are ways they personally benefit and they're equity owners now. So I think they see that there's upside to grow the game that they and we all love.”

Access is king these days, said Sellers Shy, who is beginning his fifth year as executive producer for CBS Sports’ golf coverage.

“The fan has made it clear that we want to be inside the ropes and something that this team internally has talked about is that prioritizing the fan is going to be one of our initiatives,” Shy said. “We want to give them what we feel like they deserve and that access is one of those pillars to our production this year.”

Trevor Immelman, the 2008 Masters champion and lead analyst for the PGA Tour on CBS, said he wouldn’t have had a problem with an interview before the round when he was playing.

“For the most part, it's pretty easy to carve out a couple minutes here or there, just to add a little something special, even if you get up and say, ‘You know, I just had a pretty awful warmup, first tee shot is one of the most uncomfortable of the day for me and I'm still trying to figure out what my strategy is going to be there.’ That all of a sudden really brings the viewer into wow, I cannot wait to see what this guy does on the first hole and he's been open and honest with his assessment of how the warm-up was and this is going to be a roller coaster ride for the rest of the day; I need to watch this. On top of that, he's my favorite player, so I'm a little concerned. And so little things like that really can add a lot.”

Immelman pointed out that for the past couple of years, players have been referring to “the product” and speaking about the importance of improving said product but haven’t necessarily grasped the role they play in making a difference.

“Some guys are a little more reluctant than others. I mean, we've seen that quite honestly over the last couple years, as we're trying to get guys to do walk and talks,” Immelman said. “But I think this just helps overall, I hear you've got one of the most famous names in the sport, one of the biggest names on the PGA Tour, and he's just flat out put it out there to these guys and in essence really even called out the rest of the players saying, ‘Come on, we owe this to our fans and to our partners to maybe give a little more.’ So I'm thankful that he did it and I can't wait to see how it unfolds over the next few weeks and through the course of the season.”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Jim Nantz, Trevor Immelman, CBS execs weigh in on Justin Thomas letter