Roger Maltbie is back – again. Here’s why golf can’t quit it

Good news for Course Whisperer fans: Roger Maltbybeloved NBC Sports/Golf Channel inside-the-ropes correspondent, will return for nine more events this year, starting this week with AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Rajah played in the Pebble tournament as a PGA Tour rookie. This was in 1975.

This Steven Wright bit brings to mind:

“How about those Stones? Still doing it after all these years.”

Appropriate pause.

“Fred, Barney.”

Along with Fred and Barney, and Mick and Keith, you can add Roger to that list. Still at it, after all these years. When Roger gives you an observation or an insight, it’s a considered thing.

“In my opinion,” Maltbie said in a recent telephone interview, “the Tap Rooms at the Lodge at Pebble Beach is the best watering hole in golf.” As for the gardens, it will take over the backyard at the La Playa Hotel in Carmel residential, a few miles from The Lodge. Maltbie and his wife, Donna, were married there in 1980.

In the fall of 2022, when it was announced that NBC Sports was not renewing Maltbie’s contract for 2023, golf fans staged peaceful protests at 30 Rockefeller Center. Well, no – but there were a lot of upset people. Maltbie knows the game inside and out, but never presents it as a matter of life and death. Additionally, you can hear his famous mustache buzzing the microphone speaker from time to time. He worked shifts in ’23, ’24 and ’25, but they were nothing like prime-timer affairs. This year Maltbie will work nine events, including some of the biggest of the year, including the Players Championship. When Maltbie says The Players is very, very close to a major, it’s a considered thought. His take on the Tap Room at The Lodge, same. His views are his own and are earned. His love of the game and life shines through it all.

For several years, Maltbie’s Pebble Beach pro-am partner was Eddie DeBartolo, owner of the San Francisco 49ers. In football season, DeBartolo would host a few outings, Maltbie among the guests, in which various associates would play Pebble on Monday, watch Monday Night Football in the tap room, and then play cypress the next day. Maltbie returned to Cypress last year, for the Walker Cup. He was in good shape and knows the course well. In Maltbie’s first decade on Tour, the Cypress Point Club course was part of the three-course rotation for the Pebble Beach Tour.

Now the tournament is a so-called Signature event – 80 players, no cut, two courses, Pebble and Spyglass Hill. But there are certain constants at AT&T. Clint Eastwood has been forever associated with the tour. The legendary actor, director and golfer is now 95 years old. Jim Nantz has covered it for decades as a CBS Sports broadcaster. Maltbie, as a television talent, has always been associated with the Golf Channel and NBC Sports, going back to the late 1980s. This week, this weekend, Maltbie will be hitting the fairways for the Golf Channel for all four rounds. On the weekend, there will be coverage, as usual, on the Golf Channel before the hot mics are passed to Nantz and Co. “I haven’t seen Jim in forever,” Maltbie said. “Look forward to it.”

Maltbie will also return to Muirfield Village for the Jack Nicklaus Memorial Tour in early June. “I haven’t been there in years,” Maltbie said. “It will be fascinating to see what Jack has done on the course.” Maltbie won the first Memorial, in 1976. “If I had been born the day I won that tournament, I would have qualified for the senior tournament here very quickly,” Maltbie said.

Maltbie will work the US Open at Shinnecock and the US Senior Open at Scioto, where Nicklaus learned the game in the 1940s and ’50s. Some of Maltbie’s most exciting broadcasts were covering, at close range, the extreme intensity of Woods competing at the US Open, particularly at Torrey Pines in 2008. Maltbie called the shots Woods played before, during and after in the fewest, most pointed words possible, and could often interject Woods’ interviews to light up. Woods liked Maltbie – you could tell. Maltbie was as cold as Woods was connected. Both are native Californians. Woods went to Stanford. Maltbie, under considerably less pressure, went to San Jose State.

Maltbie will also work the Senior PGA Championship at Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla., immediately following the Masters. Woods could make his major debut there. He is right, to say the least. “I’m hoping what everybody’s hoping,” Maltbie said — that Woods will be healthy enough to play the 72-hole walk-only tournament.

Maltbie will work two other Florida tournaments that are mainstays on the NBC Sports calendar, the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship. Gamers, you may have heard (according to the last comment by Brandel Chamblee), is not just a degree, but the best of degrees. “I can see how you can make that case,” said Maltbie. “Great field, great course, getting better all the time. But would I want to beat the players over the other four championships? No.”

As a player and broadcaster, the Tour was a way of life for Maltbie. If you’re at a watering hole and Maltbie is around and someone is tinkling the keys, chances are good that Roger will be listening intently. That’s what happened for two weeks at the Pinecrest Inn in Pinehurst, when two US Opens, one for men and one for women, were played on course no. 2 in consecutive weeks in 2014. Pianist each night was Randy Carmichael, son of legendary pianist and composer Hoagy Carmichael. At Bohemian Grove, a large private campground where Roger pitches tents from time to time, Maltbie would sometimes hear Bob Weir, the late Grateful Dead member, strumming an acoustic six-string under the stars. Good times.

When all those people were upset a few years ago when NBC didn’t renew their deal with Roger, they were protesting a corporate effort to snuff out a distinctive voice that celebrates the good times of golf, whether the player makes a 2 or a 7. What Maltbie’s comment really adds up to is this: Golf is a good time. He played in 520 PGA Tour events. He worked at least 400 as a broadcaster. He doesn’t know the exact number and doesn’t particularly care. But he’s adding another to his grand total this week. He is working at the Pebble station, and all is well.