It would not be a golf major without Jim Nantz taking a subtle dig at LIV Golf.
As Dustin Johnson was set to tee off at the PGA Championship on Thursday, Nantz remarked on the former Masters champ’s win the previous week on the LIV Tour.
“Not sure if you had a chance to see it, but he was the winner last week in Tulsa in a playoff over Cam Smith,” Nantz said on the ESPN broadcast.
Johnson was victorious in Tulsa, but the tight finish that included two of the top players in the world was pulled off the majority of CW affiliates for other programming.
Fans were instead directed to the CW app with about four holes left for the golfers.
The decision came as it was announced LIV Golf would no longer reveal the ratings for their events after the minuscule viewership was the subject of ridicule earlier this year.
This is the first year that LIV Golf is on broadcast television after its inaugural season was only shown on streaming.
It is not the first time this year that Nantz has used the big stage to poke fun at the PGA Tour’s rival.
During the Masters, Nantz remarked on Brooks Koepka — another LIV defector — hitting a shot from the crosswalk on the 15th hole of Augusta.
“There he is, right on the CW — the crosswalk,” said Nantz, who was possibly the first person ever to shorten the word crosswalk with initials.
Nantz told the SI Media podcast that he was “being a little cheeky” with the comment.
“It definitely was not a shot. It just was something that I could see for the first time that his second shot at 15 had ended up on the crosswalk,” Nantz said. “And that’s a rarity, you see a player on the crosswalk. It’s just the way my brain works, sometimes.
“But, you know, the bottom line is, I think that we showed every golfer in that field last week a tremendous amount of respect, no matter what tour where they’re playing. And there certainly wasn’t an attempt to create any sharper edge or division between the game. To me it was, it was a nothing. It was just—what is it that Al [Michaels] says sometimes—he has a little bit of a rascal in him.
“You know, if you get to know me a little bit, and I’m talking about off the air, that’s a lot more of the kind of the way I communicate with people than maybe what you might think if you watch my broadcasting. But it was meant to be, nothing, basically. It was just on the crosswalk.”
Like Koepka at the Masters, Johnson is in contention at the PGA Championship.
Johnson fired a 3-under 67 at Oak Hill in Rochester, NY, with the course playing extremely difficult.
Johnson was one shot behind leader Bryson DeChambeau, who is yet another top player who bolted for the riches of the Saudi-funded LIV Golf.