‘ManningCast’ comes to golf as PGA gets alternate telecast
Joe Buck is back in golf at another major, this time the PGA Championship with ESPN. He’ll be sharing his space with the likes of Fred Couples and Charles Barkley, and Peyton and Eli Manning will be sure to drop in.
Buck is leading what amounts to a “ManningCast” next week at Southern Hills.
ESPN, which has the weekday rights to the PGA Championship with extended coverage on ESPN+, says the alternate telecast will be produced in collaboration with Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions.
Buck, who previously led U.S. Open coverage when it was on Fox Sports from 2015 through 2019, will host the show with Michael Collins of ESPN. The Mannings will be guests at some point during the tournament, and other guests include Couples and Barkley, Troy Aikman, Josh Allen and actor Jon Hamm.
The ManningCast got strong reviews during “Monday Night Football” last year.
“We loved doing ‘Monday Night Football’ with ESPN and the entire Omaha team has been looking forward to producing alternate telecasts that celebrate other sports,” Peyton Manning said. “As one of golf’s majors, the PGA Championship is a perfect place to do our first one for golf and we look forward to working with Joe, Michael and everyone in ESPN’s golf team.”
The alternate telecast will be shown for four hours a day during all four rounds. It will air from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday and Friday during the final hour of live coverage on ESPN+ and then move to ESPN2 for the last three hours (as coverage moves to ESPN). On the weekend, Buck & Co. will be on from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. on ESPN (live coverage is on ESPN+) and then switch to ESPN+ as live coverage shifts to ESPN until 1 p.m.
CBS Sports has the final six hours of the weekend telecast.
The ManningCast earlier this year extended its deal with “Monday Night Football” to add a fourth year through 2024. ESPN is in the third year of an 11-year agreement to televise the PGA Championship.
May day
The Wells Fargo Championship had its weakest field since the tournament began in 2003, with Max Homa getting 44 points for winning, down from 60 a year ago.
Was it the one-time move to the TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm because the traditional site, Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, is hosting the Presidents Cup later this year?
Or are players still trying to figure out a schedule with the PGA Championship now in its third year of being played in May?
Until this year, the fewest ranking points awarded the Wells Fargo winner was 50 on three occasions: 2014 (one year after the greens were a weather-related wreck); 2017 (held at Eagle Point because the PGA was at Quail Hollow) and 2019 (the first year of the PGA Championship moving to May).
The Wells Fargo winner received 60 points last year, and perhaps that was about location — the PGA Championship was at Kiawah Island, about 225 miles from Quail.
Next year the PGA Championship is at Oak Hill in Rochester, New York.
The last two weeks on the PGA Tour featured only one player from the top 15 — Jon Rahm in the Mexico Open (he won) and Rory McIlroy at Wells Fargo (fifth place). Both will have played only once between majors.
The PGA Championship is next week, and the AT&T Byron Nelson has four of the top 10 players and six of the top 15, starting with world No. 1 and Masters champion Scottie Scheffler (who is from Dallas).
Meanwhile, none of the top 15 players in the world will have played more than two times during the five weeks between majors. Brooks Koepka and Hideki Matsuyama are playing the AT&T Byron Nelson this week, their first competition since the Masters.