None better than LPGA great inside ropes at the PGA

ONE OF the broadcast voices you’ll hear describing the action at the PGA Championship this week at Valhalla will be a familiar one.

It will be an informed voice, a respected voice, a comfortable voice.

Dottie Pepper’s voice from inside the ropes at PGA Tour events has become almost as much a fabric of CBS golf telecasts as Jim Nantz’s presence, and that’s the best compliment you can hand her. Her voice blends into the broadcast beautifully and is authoritative as it is empathetic.

Pepper — a 17-time winner, including two majors, on the LPGA Tour — has flourished in a job that used to be very much a man’s world.

She’s done it so well that no one views her as a woman describing strategy of the men on the PGA Tour. She’s simply viewed as a sharp and knowledgeable analyst who’s been there and done that, and who understands what’s going through those players’ minds.

Pepper, who began her broadcast career in 2004 as the lead LPGA analyst for the Golf Channel, has been with CBS as an oncourse reporter since 2016, and in 2020 she was named the lead on-course reporter, meaning she follows the leaders.

“I knew that we were immediately upgraded to a higher level as a team by just having her presence, her professionalism,’’ Nantz said. “I don’t think people think of her as being a woman on a men’s broadcast. She is so respected. She’s walking down the fairway always with the final pairing. People are chanting her name.

“Nobody thinks about all the groundbreaking, pioneering stuff anymore. People just think of her as an excellent broadcaster. I know the players have nothing but the ultimate respect for her. She knows them all — the caddies, the coaches, agents and the players. They’re honored to have her in their presence.’’

What Pepper does inside the ropes with a microphone is a gift as rare as the one that helped her win all those tournaments as a player.

“She works harder than anybody,’’ Nantz said. “She has the sense of timing, the empathy in her voice when things go bad. She knows how to reflect the situation — highs and lows, triumph and tragedy. She can definitely feel the moment and give a sense of that to the viewer.’’

Nantz recalled walking the practice range to speak to players and gather some nuggets for the broadcast at an LPGA Championship years ago, when Pepper was in the prime of her career, and being nervous introducing himself to her.

“I honestly was a little scared, maybe even intimidated to go up to her, but I did,’’ he said. “She could not have been nicer. It was in the middle of a warm-up session before around at a major championship, and she was just super. I can’t give you specifics on what she told me back then, but she knew what I was looking for.’’

Pepper laughed at that Nantz recollection when it was relayed to her.

“I wanted a Plan B, and my thought over time was that it’d be really cool to be able to be a broadcaster,’’ Pepper said. “I was thinking local sports. I would have been very happy doing local sports where I live in the Capital Region [near Albany, N.Y.].’’

She did better than that, of course.

Judy Rankin, the 26-time winner on the LPGA Tour and a pioneer for women in broadcasting, somewhat unwittingly got Pepper into her career second act. With the 1999 U.S.

Women’s Amateur being played in Asheville, N.C., which is near where Pepper was living at the time, Rankin told her producer, “I think Dottie Pepper could do this. I think she’d be a great oncourse person for us.’’

Pepper — whose father, Don, played for the Detroit Tigers — was still in the midst of her playing career, but the LPGA was off that week.

“They took her on, and I have often times called that my claim to fame, that I got Dottie Pepper into television,’’ Rankin said. “She got it from the get-go. She has a very organized mind.’’

Pepper is forever grateful for Rankin’s foresight.

“I wasn’t really looking to get into broadcasting at that point, because I’d won a major championship earlier that season. I was still playing golf,’’ Pepper recalled. “But she thought it would be a good opportunity. I had always hoped to get into doing this, but it wasn’t the forefront of what I was looking for at that time.

“But there were greater powers that be thought that was a good time to start thinking about it.’’

Pepper, too, is forever grateful for the path that Rankin paved for her and other women in broadcasting.

“If Judy hadn’t done the job she did, there wouldn’t have been an opportunity for me or anybody else who has gone forward in broadcasting as a female — and I’m not talking just about golf,’’ Pepper said. “She really was really transcendent beyond the game of golf. If Judy Rankin hadn’t been as good as she is none of us would have had the opportunities that we did.’’

To Pepper’s credit, she seized her opportunity and has become elite in her field — same way she was as a player.

“One of the greatest pieces of advice I ever got from one of my producers a long time ago was, ‘We don’t want your perspective as a woman, we want your perspective as a golfer,’ ” Rankin said, “and that’s what Dottie does extremely well.”