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CBS Sports has been televising professional golf for more than six decades, and in all that time, only three men have led its coverage of that sport.
First was Frank Chirkinian, whose inaugural assignment for the network was overseeing production of the 1958 PGA Championship. Known as “the Ayatollah” for his autocratic and occasionally abrupt manner, he was diminutive physically but loomed as large as a grizzly bear in the television truck. Chirkinian’s strength was storytelling, but he was always looking for new and different ways to present a tournament.
He was the person, for example, who first placed microphones around a golf course, so television viewers could listen to what went on before, during and after a shot. Chirkinian was also the one who installed cameras in trees, and in blimps, to provide different perspectives of play.
Chirkinian stepped down at the end of the 1996 golf season, at which point his longtime protégé, Lance Barrow, took over. At first glance, the two could not have been more different. Barrow, the son of a central Texas dairy farmer, played college football for Abilene Christian University and was built like a man who had spent a fair amount of time on the gridiron. He also brought a much more restrained management style to the producer’s chair.
But having worked dozens of tournaments at Chirkinian’s side through the years, Barrow could not help but take similar approaches when it came to covering a championship as he added his own touches. The transition was seamless, and Barrow prospered in that same role for the network through the 2020 Masters.
Now comes Sellers Shy. At 49 years old and a native of Memphis, Tennessee, the sturdy, dark-haired Southerner with a balding pate assumed the position of lead golf producer of CBS Sports in January. His first tournament in that role was the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, and he followed that in February with the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Genesis Invitational at Riviera. Since then, Shy has overseen two major championships – the Masters won by Hideki Matsuyama in April and the PGA Championship in May that gave golf a most unlikely victor in Phil Mickelson.
“(Sellers Shy) knows the game, he’s very calm in the truck, he’s very collaborative, and he has a great sense of timing and pacing as well as the ability to manage all the different elements of a golf tournament.”
SEAN McMANUS, CHAIRMAN CBS SPORTS
And this past week, Shy enjoyed something of a homecoming when he returned to Memphis for the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational.
Shy’s golf season ends in a couple of weeks, and the general consensus is that he has enjoyed a very good rookie campaign. Like Barrow before him, he quickly and quite capably filled his mentor’s shoes – and then some.
“Sellers has been involved with golf for us going back to when he was a runner in the late 1980s,” said CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus. “Along the way, he learned from Frank and Lance, who are two of the most respected and influential producers in the history of the game. He knows the game, he’s very calm in the truck, he’s very collaborative, and he has a great sense of timing and pacing as well as the ability to manage all the different elements of a golf tournament.”
Shy is not inclined to openly assess his performance for CBS Sports this year, other than to say that “we have had some great stories to tell, and I think we have told them well.”
“Daniel Berger’s eagle on the 18th at Pebble Beach to seal his win in the AT&T, for one,” he explained. “Hideki Matsuyama winning the Masters and watching him slip on his green jacket while appreciating the global impact of that victory. And Phil Mickelson becoming the oldest major champion ever when he took the PGA Championship at Kiawah. That was a big moment for Phil, of course, but also for our team, as I feel we delivered as well in our field as Phil did in his, especially that wild finish on the 18th.”
Golf in many ways seems a perfect place for Shy, who grew up around the game. Mentored by fellow Tennessean and three-time major winner Cary Middlecoff, he learned to play at Memphis Country Club. In time, Shy became a good enough stick to compete in two World Junior Golf Championships at Torrey Pines and qualify for the Tennessee State Amateur on three occasions.
Shy was 15 years old when he started enjoying golf in another way. “The Danny Thomas Memphis Classic was played in town each year, and I was able to secure a job that week as a runner for CBS Sports,” he recalled about his time assisting the on-site production manager with any task. “I really enjoyed the work and the atmosphere. The people, too. And naturally, I just loved being around the game.”
In subsequent years at that event Shy reprised his work for CBS, before heading off to the University of Mississippi to study journalism. While there, his friends at the network reached out to him about another assignment.
“It was the summer of 1992, and the PGA was being played just up the road in St. Louis, at Bellerive,” Shy said. “They called to say they needed some help and I immediately said I was in.”
“Perhaps more than anything else that first year, I remember being in the truck for Tiger’s win in the 1997 Masters. ... It was a week I will never forget.”
SELLERS SHY
In the next few years, Shy continued his education, in academics by graduating from the School of Journalism at Ole Miss, and also in sports broadcasting, by working the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, for CBS Sports as an intern. Three years after that, Shy joined the network full-time.
“Perhaps more than anything else that first year, I remember being in the truck for Tiger (Woods)’s win in the 1997 Masters,” Shy said of Woods’ historic breakthrough. “It was a week I will never forget.”
As a full-time member of the golf team, Shy has served as a replay producer, associate director and producer for the network’s coverage of the PGA Tour as well as the Masters, PGA Championship, Asia Pacific Amateur Championship and Latin American Amateur Championship. A winner of multiple Emmy Awards, he has also produced National Football League games and NCAA basketball games.
Not long after Shy learned he would succeed Barrow, he started to create a list of action items he wanted to implement in his new role.
“Having a constant mini leaderboard on screen was one of those,” Shy explained. “Having an outside rules official for every one of our tour events, as we do with Gene Steratore as our NFL rules analyst the past few years, was another. I also wanted to enhance Amanda (Balionis)’s cart. And add new music, too.”
In addition, the CBS golf production team created what eventually was dubbed “the super tower” as COVID-19 protocols eased.
“It came out of our coverage of golf during the pandemic and having Sir Nick Faldo, Ian Baker-Finch and Frank Nobilo in our Orlando studio during a tournament,” he said. “We liked the way they interacted, sitting together and being able to play off of one another using eye contact and hand gestures. So, we decided that rather than having them in separate towers on the golf course, we could have them in a super tower at 18 with Jim (Nantz).”
Shy also endeavored to provide as much aerial coverage, whether with drones, airplanes or blimps.
“We were there with a drone for Daniel Berger’s eagle at Pebble,” Shy said. “And of course, we went back and forth with a drone and our camera on the ground when Phil played the 18th hole at Kiawah the last day of the PGA Championship. Doing those things can really enhance the drama of the moment.”
As his golf season winds down, Shy is not yet sure what he will be doing in the months ahead. “I produced football for us last autumn, so I assume I will work a handful of games this fall as well,” he said.
He will also look forward to seeing more of his wife, Stephanie, and their three children. The oldest of those is Sellers Jr., a wide receiver on the Ole Miss football team. Then there is 18-year-old Edwin, who is committed to play lacrosse at the University of North Carolina. Gracie, the youngest of the Shy clan and the only daughter, is starting her junior year in high school.
Shy might try to play a bit of golf on occasion, at the Memphis Country Club, where his love of the game began to take form some four decades ago.
He also will take time to look at each of the tournaments he covered last year and assess the jobs he and his team did and the ways they can improve.
“I love the history of the game and being able to tie that into what is happening today and give our viewers a sense of the thrill and energy we all feel on site,” Shy said. “I have such respect for the CBS eye, knowing who came before me. Frank and Lance set certain standards of excellence and innovation, and I am humbled to be following in their footsteps.”
He appears to be more than up to the task.
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