Jimmy Roberts’ Candid Tale Reveals the Beautiful, Messy Reality of Live Broadcasting

Listen, after 35 years covering professional golf—and having spent time in the caddie shack with some of the game’s most colorful characters—I’ve learned that the moments we remember aren’t always the ones we plan for. They’re the unscripted ones. The ones where professionalism meets human nature in real time, caught on camera.

Which is why I found myself grinning ear to ear reading about Jimmy Roberts’ recent appearance on GOLF’s Subpar podcast, where the 16-time Emmy winner confessed to one of broadcasting’s greatest cardinal sins: dropping an on-air expletive during coverage of the Deutsche Bank Championship in the early 2000s.

Now, before you think I’m here to pile on one of the game’s most respected voices, let me be clear: I think this story tells us something important about the craft of sports broadcasting that we don’t talk about nearly enough.

The Chaos Behind the Curtain

Roberts explained the context with refreshing honesty. He was tasked with introducing short sports highlights during tournament coverage—a segment that required him to work with incomplete information and improvise on the fly.

“The information was kind of sketchy sometimes,” Roberts began. “And you really had to ad-lib, and you had to kind of just fly by the seat of your pants.”

Having caddied for Tom Lehman back in the day, I saw firsthand how professionals operate under pressure with incomplete data. You make decisions with what you’ve got and trust your instincts. Broadcasters do the same thing, except their mistakes happen in front of millions.

What I find fascinating about Roberts’ story is that his slip-up wasn’t born from laziness or carelessness. It came from genuine shock at the magnitude of what he was witnessing on screen—a home run of such proportions that his carefully prepared notes simply couldn’t contain it.

“But I was caught totally unaware about how big this home run would be. So, I’m watching the screen, I say, ‘And the pitch, it —’ and I go, the following: ‘Holy sh!'”

That’s not a broadcasting failure. That’s authenticity breaking through the machinery.

The Presence of Mind Problem

In my experience covering the tour, I’ve noticed that the best broadcasters—the ones who sound natural and engaging—are those willing to acknowledge the inherent chaos of live television. Roberts demonstrated something important here: he understood the real-time adjustment required. He just didn’t have the presence of mind in that split second to execute it.

That’s the thing about broadcasting at the highest level. It’s not about knowing everything. It’s about having the mental flexibility to course-correct when reality doesn’t match your preparation. Roberts acknowledged this directly, and I respect that immensely.

“And I only get as far as ‘sh.’ And I didn’t have the presence of mind at that point to kind of pivot and say something like, holy sugar! Holy shamole! Whatever, right?”

Here’s what strikes me: in an era of increasingly sanitized sports coverage, where every word is focus-tested and every moment pre-packaged, there’s something oddly refreshing about a broadcaster simply being human. Roberts felt genuine astonishment and it leaked through the microphone. For approximately half a second, we heard the real reaction.

The Tour’s Broadcasting Evolution

Over my 15 Masters tournaments and countless PGA Tour events, I’ve watched broadcast standards tighten considerably. There’s more production value, more graphics, more coordination. But there’s also more distance between the broadcasters and the raw emotion of what’s happening on the course.

Roberts came up in an era—the early 2000s—when broadcasting still had some wild edges. You had to improvise. You had to trust your instincts because the safety net wasn’t as robust. In some ways, we’ve lost something in the march toward polish and perfection.

That said, I’m not advocating for a return to the anything-goes days of sports broadcasting. Standards exist for good reasons. But Roberts’ story reminds us that the best broadcasting moments often come when professionalism intersects with genuine human reaction—and that’s a delicate balance worth preserving.

The Humility Factor

What impresses me most isn’t that Roberts made a mistake. It’s that he’s comfortable enough in his legacy to share the story publicly, complete with all its awkward details. And to acknowledge that he felt genuinely humiliated, only to be reassured when Steve Stricker came up to him and confirmed that yes, it happened exactly as badly as he feared.

The image of Stricker relaying his wife Nikki’s text message about the incident? That’s the kind of authentic golf world moment that reminds you why we love this game. It’s personal. It’s real. It’s people actually talking to each other.

In my three decades covering the tour, I’ve learned that credibility isn’t built on perfection—it’s built on knowing your craft well enough to acknowledge when you’ve stumbled in it. Jimmy Roberts has that in spades. One on-air gaffe, even from a 16-time Emmy winner, doesn’t diminish that.

If anything, his willingness to laugh at himself and share the story makes him more relatable, not less. And in broadcasting, relatability is everything.