Seventy-five-year-old Lanny Wadkins answered his phone last week on the eve of his final event as a Golf Channel analyst for the PGA Tour Champions this way:
“I’m sitting on my balcony in Hawaii, it’s almost 80 degrees, the sky is dead clear, the ocean is calm and there’s no wind.
“It’s pretty good.”
The same can be said for Wadkins, except for a balky back that has curtailed how much golf he plays, making him a restless soul when he’s hanging out at Preston Trail Golf Club in Dallas where he lives.
There are days, when Wadkins’ back allows it, when he, David Graham and Lee Trevino – each a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame – may be the only guys on the practice range. Other days, Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth show up and no one bothers them.
“It’s pretty impressive on that range sometimes,” Wadkins said.
For a few years, Wadkins has been scaling back the number of Champions events he does for television and, going forward, his chair will be occupied by Paul Azinger who, like Wadkins, once had a seat in the 18th hole tower for PGA Tour telecasts.
For nearly five years, Wadkins was the lead analyst for CBS Sports, replacing Ken Venturi and sitting alongside Jim Nantz. Wadkins was blindsided when he was replaced in 2006 by Nick Faldo and, nearly 20 years later, the sting remains.
“I got screwed by one suit out of New York who didn’t even last at CBS a month after he decided to have Faldo over me. I had three years left on the contract. That was probably the most disappointing thing,” Wadkins said.
“Had I realized I was only going to do that for five years, I wouldn’t have done that. I would have kept playing. I was still healthy. Had no issues whatsoever, had already won on the Champions tour.
“But it was an opportunity to make a lot more money than I could playing golf.”
“I’ve been OK at (TV) and now a third career is starting. If I sit home for more than a week at a time, my wife (Penny) is kicking my ass out anyway.”
Lanny Wadkins
Wadkins worked 13 seasons on Champions telecasts and the decision to run the television coverage out of the PGA Tour’s new studio complex in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., would have meant too many trips from Texas to broadcast remotely from a building rather than at a tournament site.
He was on site last week at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai, a final farewell of sorts before heading back to Texas where his course design business is thriving, keeping him on the move.
“I’ve been OK at (TV) and now a third career is starting,” said Wadkins, who won 21 times on the PGA Tour. “If I sit home for more than a week at a time, my wife (Penny) is kicking my ass out anyway.”
Wadkins’ design group works closely with Invited, formerly known as ClubCorp, with six projects underway at the moment. Most are renovation projects, some big, some small, but Wadkins knows his way around the business.
He designed Black Jack’s Crossing at Lajitas Golf Resort in southwest Texas and it has been ranked the No. 1 course open to public play in Texas by multiple publications. It helped Wadkins land the major renovation project at TPC Craig Ranch, host of the PGA Tour’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson, after the event is played in May.
Wadkins works closely with Kurt Bowman, who spent more than a decade working with Jack Nicklaus, and they lean on classic elements in their work.
“We love looking at what made old courses great and how we can incorporate that into what we’re trying to do,” Wadkins said. “Original ideas are great but the golf world is pretty traditional. If you come up with too many ideas, they’ll boot you to the curb.”
How do Wadkins’ tradition-based ideas fit in today’s changing game?
As you might imagine, Wadkins has a few thoughts on where the game is and where it’s going.
“Like a lot of my peers, I’ve been a big proponent of dialing back the ball,” Wadkins said. “I’d love to see them not hit it as far. They don’t seem to play golf as much as they bomb and gouge.
“I’m incredulous that guys can hit it that far and they aren’t good wedge players. If I could hit it that far, I’d be the best wedge player in the game.”
Wadkins pointed out that he played most of his career with a 56-degree wedge that had 14 degrees of bounce. Now, some players have new wedges every week.
Speaking of players, Wadkins took aim at both LIV players and the members of the United States Ryder Cup team in Rome.
About LIV, Wadkins said: “I’m disappointed in some people that put money above other things. There was always plenty of money in golf. A lot of these guys who took $100 million (from LIV) were already worth $50 million.
“They say they want generational money. Are they all going to be living on private islands?
“The one I love is ‘I want to spend more time with my family.’ Have you looked at the LIV schedule [14 events, with eight outside the U.S.]? Oh my god.”
About potential penalties if LIV players return to the PGA Tour, Wadkins said, “Can anybody blame the tour players who want penalties on guys who ignored their tour and now want to come back? I’d say a year penalty and a minimum $5 million fine. If it wasn’t for this tour, they wouldn’t have the impetus to go to LIV.”
As for the uproar over paying American players to participate in the Ryder Cup (players will receive a $200,000 stipend and $300,000 for charity), Wadkins was more than an interested onlooker. He, along with Curtis Strange, Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite, wrote a letter to the PGA of America which included the signatures of 10 former captains stating their opposition to paying players to play.
Wadkins said he was one of about 10 former captains in attendance in Rome and he was disappointed by how the American players treated the group.
“We were in a room across from the locker room. We were not allowed in the players’ locker room. At the hotel, they had a massive team room and we were not allowed in there,” Wadkins said.
“The European team room and locker room are all about bringing them in and making it a celebration of their history and tradition. Our guys wanted nothing to do with us. We are in a room where they had to walk right by the door to go to the golf course. Not one player came in and said one word to any of us the entire week.
“Can you imagine Palmer and Nicklaus, Hogan, Jackie Burke sitting there and it’s me and Crenshaw and Curtis (playing), we’d have been spending all our time in the room with those guys.
“Not one person even came in and said hello to us. … That soured me on that bunch of players really fast.”
If another television opportunity comes along, Wadkins might listen, but the excitement about his course design work is evident in his voice. It keeps him in the game, it excites him and there is room to grow.
For one last weekend, though, Wadkins was happy to soak in the sunshine in Hawaii. For nearly a decade, Wadkins represented Mauna Lani Resort and his job, he said, was to spend two weeks on vacation there every year.
“Two weeks a year spending time on the beach reading a book. I could do that as well as anybody,” Wadkins said.
“I love being here. I’ve probably spent a year of my life on Kona. That’s not bad.”
E-MAIL RON
Top: Life is good these days for Lanny Wadkins.
DANIEL BOCZARSKI, GETTY IMAGES
