‘The money, believe me, was insane’: Gary McCord on LIV Golf decision

For years, Gary McCord was a staple in CBS golf broadcasts, one of the most recognizable personalities and voices coming through your TV screens.

But McCord didn’t have his contract renewed by CBS back in 2019, so he was left without an on-course reporter gig. He was 71 at the time and disappointed with CBS’ decision, but turns out he would later have other options to get back on the course.

In a July 2022 interview with Golf Digest, McCord said he was in talks with LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman to join the broadcast team, which already had McCord’s long-time co-worker, David Feherty. Feherty was with McCord at CBS but jumped to NBC Sports in 2015 before moving to LIV, which not only offered big upfront money to attract star players but also to some of its broadcast team.

But McCord never followed Feherty to LIV. In this week’s episode of the GOLF’s Subpar, he explained why.

“The last conversation I had with Norman was, ‘Greg, I’m 75, I don’t want to go to Adelaide, I don’t want to go to Hong Kong, I don’t want to go to Riyadh, I can’t do it,’” McCord said.

McCord then predicted a cost-cutting tweak to all golf broadcasts, which he said was something he was would have been interested in to lessen his travel if he were to sign with LIV.

“What the future is going to be anyway, all golf shows are going to have their broadcast team going to a studio somewhere in the United States,” he said. “Every week it’s going to be there and you put two people on the ground, someone to do interviews, they will not know I’m in a studio in Dallas, Texas, with the two other guys talking. Put a backdrop of the 18th hole there, they will never know.”

Eventually, McCord returned to the question at hand: Why didn’t he go to LIV Golf with Feherty?

“I was going to go and then, the money, believe me, was insane,” he said. “Greg never told me what I’d be, but I had to ask Feherty, ‘Let me ask what you are making?’ And I went, ‘What did you say?!’,” McCord said. “I never told anybody. To this day I never told anybody. But that was interesting.”

You can watch McCord’s entire Subpar episode below, or listen to the podcast here.

Josh Berhow

Golf.com Editor

Josh Berhow is the managing editor at GOLF.com. The Minnesota native graduated with a journalism degree from Minnesota State University in Mankato. You can reach him at joshua_berhow@golf.com.