5 notable changes to CBS Golf TV broadcasts in 2026

You didn’t have to be a particularly skilled TV viewer to notice the most significant change in the CBS Golf booth during the network’s coverage of the PGA Tour’s West Coast Swing — but you should be a persistent one.

The most notable shift of the 2026 golf season for CBS arrived at Pebble Beach late Sunday night after the winner Collin Morikawa was gone in the joy of his first victory on American soil in nearly five years – and after Morikawa’s caddy Matt Urbanek had disappeared into the night with the flag on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach. It arrived 50 yards off the side of the 18th fairway, down a steep rock outcropping, and onto a beach facing a steadily rising tide.

The name of the shift it was Johnson Wagnerthe newest CBS Golf reporter on the course, who had come to reprise his role as golf’s preeminent stuntman. And as he watched the putt on the 18th that had delayed the end of the golf tournament for more than 20 minutes, the high-speed hum of the CBS Golf broadcast lapsed into a vacuum of foreboding silence.

With a 50-degree wedge detached from his bag, Wagner planted his feet, held the grip and swung. And with that beat, we begin our look at the biggest changes at CBS in 2026 — starting with the guy whose heroics have taken on a new tune…

5 notable changes to CBS Golf in 2026

5. Johnson Wagner

Wagner’s addition to the CBS Golf team is, in fact, about much more than riding on the course — though he earned quite the reputation for those in his time with the Golf Channel and NBC. In his day job with CBS, Wagner will be the network’s third “foot reporter,” following pedestrians Dottie Pepper and Mark Immelman. But he’ll moonlight doing the kind of segments that have become a golf staple over the past few years: Drawing on his experience as a professional golfer for more than two decades to recreate the day’s greatest shots and moments himself, giving fans a deeper look at their difficulty and nuance.

Wagner and CBS are still working out the details of those segments and how they fit into network broadcasts, but they’ve already provided plenty of entertainment. (For example, after hitting his putt from the beach, Wagner was given thirty seconds to climb the rocks at Pebble Beach before CBS broke down. He probably made it with five seconds to spare.)

As the new season progresses, expect Wagner’s role to expand in nature.

4. Colt Knost moves up

Colt Knost promotion to a spot in the CBS “super tower” precipitated Wagner’s hiring at CBS—a promotion himself precipitated by the retirement of longtime analyst Ian Baker-Finch from the CBS booth after more than two decades on TV.

Knost got the call to the bullpen to fill Baker-Finch’s spot, and although Baker-Finch’s role can’t be replaced on the CBS broadcast, Knost has already brought some of his own plugs to the booth. He will play a vital role for CBS alongside fellow analysts Frank Nobilo and Trevor Immelman, and together play-by-play man Jim Nantz.

3. New drones!

The PGA Tour and CBS won an Emmy last year for the latest expansion in the drone camera, a new technology called “Drone AR.” The new drone added a shot tracker to CBS’s existing drone complement, allowing the network to display photos and zoom in on a three-dimensional axis. It became instantly popular and was quickly followed by “tracker probability” lines, which relied on the Tour’s extensive ShotLink database to predict the outcome of a shot (green for good, red for bad!).

In 2026, those animations are getting another upgrade, adding drone AR analytics that help explain player tendencies, course strategy and shot intent. If you were watching at Pebble Beach, you saw the first instances of these improvements in action — though more are expected (on each of the Tour’s network broadcasts) during the 2026 season.

2. Broadcast Graphics B-2

If you looked closely, you might have seen the Golf version of the B-2 bomber flying over the skies of Pebble Beach, Phoenix, or the Riviera over the past few weeks.

No, not one CURRENT B-2 (though that would be undeniably sick) — but rather the PGA Tour’s new “Applied Weather Metrics,” which help visualize the impact of changing weather conditions by turning invisible airflow forces into fully visible, computer-generated graphics.

We’ve seen versions of the Weather Applied Metric used in tournament broadcasts in the past, most notably around the 17th tee at The Players Championship. But this new version of the technology is more powerful and comprehensive than previous iterations, displaying changes in wind, temperature and humidity to help viewers understand the changes each week.

1. A new schedule

Golf fans have witnessed the Tour’s shape-shifting schedule up close in 2026, with the late cancellation of The Sentry in Maui and the return of the Cadillac Championship to Doral as part of March’s Florida Swing.

These changes have had downstream effects on the Tour’s broadcasters, who have revised their 2026 TV schedules to accommodate the changes. First, CBS will take the Cadillac out of Doral, taking a tour of a place where the network holds a half-century of broadcast history. In exchange for this addition (and the loss of Sentry to NBC), CBS will do so trade Travelers Championship on NBC, helping to anchor the regular season tournament schedule.

There is also a change in the broadcast schedule after the PGA Tour season. As part of the Tour’s annual broadcast rights cadence, CBS will pick up this year’s FedEx Cup Playoffs, with coverage continuing through the Tour Championship in late August.