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A Fitting Farewell: Verne Lundquist’s Emotional Final Moment at the Masters

You are aware of the calls, of course. Many legendary sporting events have had Verne Lundquist’s music as the soundtrack, including Jack Nicklaus’s “Yes, sir!” birdie putt at the 17th hole of the 1986 Masters, Christian Laettner’s “Yes!” jumper at the buzzer of the 1992 NCAA Tournament, Tiger Woods’ “In your life, have you seen anything like that?” chip at No. 16 at the 2005 Masters, and Auburn’s kick-six in the 2013 Iron Bowl (“An answered prayer!”). And so many more.

However, the following may surprise you: Lundquist was just a 23-year-old afternoon disc jockey and weekend sportscaster on television at KTBC-AM-FM-TV, an Austin, Texas radio-television station owned by Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, on the evening of November 22, 1963. That evening, he offered to drive David Schoumacher, the CBS News correspondent, and two other CBS employees the sixty miles from Austin to Johnson City so they could do interviews with Johnson’s acquaintances, family members, and other students from high school. Johnson would shortly assume the presidency. That evening was something he would never forget. How were you able to?

Nonetheless, the tale of how Verne met Nancy, his wife, is my favorite. He told me about it years ago when he was writing for Sports Illustrated. Here it is, as said by him:

We met in a bar — and I hasten to add it was an upscale bar in Dallas. It was a place called Arthur’s. I walked in after I did the 10 o’clock news (at WFAA-TV in Dallas) and I just didn’t want to go home. Nancy and her date were at the bar and her date recognized me from local television and invited me over to have a drink. He introduced me to his date and her name was Nancy Miller. It was their first date, a blind date. So we sat and chatted and her date, Raymond Willie, said to me, “Listen, I know you are single. I’m going to fix you up with a friend of mine and we can all go to dinner.” He looked at Nancy and asked her, “What are you doing Thursday night?” She said, “Nothing.” He said, “Good, you’ll be my date and we’ll fix Verne up with this schoolteacher friend of mine and we’ll go to dinner.” Meanwhile, I’m looking at Nancy thinking she is the prettiest thing I have ever seen in my life. So, Raymond finally left to take care of his business and I asked Nancy, “So, how involved are you with Raymond?” She said, “Oh, this is our first date and it’s a blind date.” So I said, “Well, forget what he is talking about on Thursday night. What are you doing on Saturday night?” She said, “I think I am doing whatever you are doing.”

On Sunday afternoon, Lundquist signed off the air for the final time at CBS Sports after working his 40th Masters, a nice round number that he felt, at age 83, was the way to go out.

“(CBS Sports chairman) Sean (McManus) and I had a conversation a couple of years ago about what would be the proper time to exit stage left, and he and I agreed that 40 had a nice round feel to it and that we would exit from the Masters and CBS at the end of the second week in April this year,” Lundquist said on a recent conference call. “I’ve got so many wonderful memories tied up with our visits to Augusta.”

The retirements of Lundquist and McManus made for an emotional week at Augusta for the CBS Sports staff. Over the weekend, Lundquist received an abundance of flowers from Augusta National, ESPN, The Washington Post, and Golf Digest, among other places. In a tribute, Verne and Nancy were shown on CBS Sports’ No. 16, the hole where we frequently heard him.

“They celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary this week at the Masters,” host Jim Nantz said of the couple as CBS came out of the video tribute. “And we will be celebrating you for as long as there is a Masters Tournament, Verne Lundquist.”

Lundquist already had a successful career before reaching the network level. He was the radio voice of the Dallas Cowboys from 1972-84 and the sports director for WFAA-TV in Dallas. The “SEC on CBS” job was the first as a lead broadcaster for Lundquist, who has worked for ABC Sports and Turner Sports in addition to CBS. McManus offered Lundquist the play-by-play role for SEC football in 2000, which soon became a big deal because of the SEC’s explosion nationally. It changed how sports fans saw him too.

“(CBS) lost the NFL to Fox in 1994, and I stayed at CBS for one year after that, and then a wonderful guy, the late Mike Pearl who was our executive producer of the Olympics, went to Turner Sports and invited me to come over there and I did for two years,” Lundquist said. “I’ll never forget we were in Nagano, Japan, and CBS had reacquired the rights to the NFL. Sean came up to me … before the men’s (figure skating) championships. We had about six or seven minutes to chat, and he tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Are you ready to come home?’ That’s probably the greatest question I’ve ever received in my life. So I came back, and of course, got back in the Masters rotation. It’s been a great run. Hey, I’m 83 years old. I’ve been blessed to have a sensational professional life and a wonderful personal life. I wasn’t the first to say this, but thanks for the memories.”

I went to Baton Rouge in 2016 to watch Lundquist’s final season of football with the CBS SEC football team. I witnessed firsthand how much the others in his immediate vicinity loved him. At seventy-six years old, the team treated him as a father figure.

“He’s the exact same Uncle Verne that I knew back in 1985, the first time I met him,” said Nantz. “Of course, I was very familiar with him before I joined the CBS team. We were assigned to a Christmas Day football game (the Blue-Gray Football Classic) in 1985. I was in my mid-20s, and I found myself working a show with Verne Lundquist. That’s really big. I was nervous about it. The night before the game, Verne and Nancy invited me to join them for dinner, which meant a lot. In a lot of ways, I think that kind of showed me what the CBS culture was about, how you act as a teammate. … Verne unknowingly was mentoring me even back then on how to be inclusive, be kind, be caring, treat people like family. It meant a lot.”

As Ludvig Åberg, Max Homa, Collin Morikawa, and Scottie Scheffler each hit No. 16 at the 6 p.m. ET hour, it was a pleasure to hear Lundquist’s call one last time.At 6:30 p.m., the audience strolling No. 16 erupted in cheers for Morikawa and Scheffler. Nantz said, “And Verne, that crowd could just as well be standing for you.”

Verne made a final birdie call as Scheffler gained a 4-stroke lead.

“The hour belongs to Scottie Scheffler,” Lundquist said as the eventual Masters champion left the hole, but he really could have been talking about himself.

In the post-Caitlin Clark era, how can women’s college basketball keep TV momentum? Here’s my piece on it.

A trio of sports media podcasts that might interest you:

• A discussion with Flora Kelly, ESPN’s vice president of brand strategy and content research. Kelly discusses her position at ESPN, how it influences the business, the operations of her research team, and the broad trends she anticipates in sports in 2024.

• An interview with best-selling author James Andrew Miller, who has written books for HBO, ESPN, CAA, and “Saturday Night Live.” Miller talks about Norby Williamson of ESPN, who spent over forty years working for the network and touched practically every aspect of its business and content, including news, production, and programming.

• An interview with Sports Media Watch’s founder and editor, Jon Lewis. Lewis talks about how many people watch the men’s and women’s competitions.

Here are some intriguing articles I have read in the past week (warning: there are a lot of paywalls):

• Forsaken, the best article I have read this month: A little Ontario village was destroyed over the course of 14 years, 140 officers, and a sinister secret. The process of solving the Lucas Shortreed case. by The Hamilton Spectator’s Jon Wells.

• Kentucky is charged with “complicity” in the alleged sexual abuse of a former swim coach. by The Athletic’s Katie Strang.

• A once-peaceful nation is on the verge of collapse due to a drug uprising. By Arturo Torres and Samantha Schmidt of The Washington Post.

• Augusta National’s Black Caddies, Masters of the Green. By Garden and Gun’s Latria Graham.

• While O.J. Simpson’s induction into the Hall of Fame is likely, some context is not prohibited.by CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones.

• What would happen if gambling consumed a generation of sports fans? by The Athletic’s Steve Buckley.

Examining Amazon’s Attempt to Overtake Trader Joe’s and Take Over Everything. by Wall Street Journal staff writer Dana Mattioli.

• The sets matter when it comes to building muscle. by Outside’s Alex Hutchinson.

• Machines Will Be America’s Future Soldiers. written by Foreign Policy’s Jack Detsch.

• Henry Aaron’s legacy endures in Atlanta and beyond even after 50 years. through The Washington Post’s Michael Lee.

• North Korea’s Internet was taken down by a vigilante hacker. He is now removing his mask. by Wired’s Andy Greenberg.

• Check Your Workout I.Q. The Times of New York

• The Key Detail Missing From the Narrative About O.J. and Race. by Slate’s Joel Anderson.

• Caitlin Clark’s performance on “Saturday Night Live” was excellent.

• Did a Single Person Just Stop a Massive Cyberattack? By The New York Times’ Kevin Roose.

• How AI might completely change baseball. by The Washington Post’s Josh Tyrangiel.

• What became of the damages that O.J. Simpson owed the families of the victims? by The New York Times’ Anna Betts.

(Photo of Verne Lundquist at Augusta National Golf Club in 2012: Augusta National / Getty Images)

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