Mike Tirico is no stranger to the privilege of witnessing to sports history.
He’s just not used to starring in it.
Despite the Super Bowls, Olympics, NBA Finals and Masters on his resume, the NBC Sports lead broadcaster has never faced an opportunity to make history quite like the one he accidentally stumbled into on Friday afternoon at last month’s Open Championship.
As we first covered last month, Tirico was among the very small group of eyewitnesses to the penalty that turned the Open on its head: Bryson DeChambeau’s two-shot docking after R&A rules officials found he’d improved his lie from off to the side of the 5th hole at Royal Birkdale.
Tirico was serving as a “spotter” for NBC’s broadcast, a decision he said was driven primarily by a simple fact: He’s covered more than 70 majors in his career, in his estimation, and he’s walked inside the ropes for an entire round at precisely none of them.
“Honestly I just wanted to learn the job,” he told GOLF last month. “If you learn how things work behind the scenes, hopefully it makes you better.”
In his role as a spotter, it was Tirico’s job to track each of the balls in the group, walking over to their approximate location in order to relay info back to the NBC Sports talent sharing the hole with him (Bones Mackay) as well as the NBC Sports production truck. On a typical day, a spotter’s role is simple: to serve as the eyes on the ground, keeping track of all the balls in play at any given moment.
But as Tirico revealed on this week’s episode of Barstool’s Foreplay podcast, few people knew just how close the star broadcaster got to potentially upending his week — and Bryson’s — from in the tall stuff during the hole that proved the most consequential of the week.
“So I’m in the group on Friday when Bryson hits it far-right in the 5th, and we head over because we think we’re going to have to be part of the ball search here,” Tirico recalled. “So I’m walking over, and I’m like, ‘well, I’m here now, so let me just go get a number for Bones like how far right of the hazard Bryson missed the shot. So I kinda go walk it off quick, like hey, he’s 15 yards right of the hazard — that’s how far right he missed. So I head back and I’m on 18 and I’m like ‘what’s going on? Bryson hasn’t signed his scorecard? What’s the issue?’”
Soon word trickled back to Tirico that the R&A was taking a close look at the action on No. 5, where Bryson had trampled around in the fescue before hitting his rescue shot. This was news to Tirico for a few reasons, but most notably this one: He’d spent time in that fescue, and hadn’t spotted a golf ball.
“We didn’t know while we were out there anything that had happened or what went on, but now you start seeing Zapruder films, you see every angle of it,” Tirico said. “There’s one angle of it that shows me walking close to it. And I’m like ‘oh dear god, please tell me I didn’t get anywhere close to the ball. I didn’t want to be trampling any fescue anywhere.’”
After a few moments of terror, Tirico was relieved to see his pacing stop near where the ball was eventually retrieved, but not close enough to have affected the shot in any way.
“Now I take this turn back after I pace it off,” Tirico said with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘oh thank god, I wasn’t close. I was never close.’”
It wasn’t much, but for the man used to seeing golf from “inside the bubble” of the 18th tower, it was more than enough excitement for his in-the-field debut.
As it turns out, sometimes it’s more fun to be the one calling the action.
You hear Tirico share the story of his time inside the ropes at the Open at the link below.
