Inside the coronavirus world for Jim Nantz, CBS Sports at RBC Heritage on Hilton Head
This year’s RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing is a made-for-TV event, so why does CBS Sports anchor Jim Nantz have his back to the action?
The answer is as familiar as the CBS logo, now on display for the 45th year at the Harbour Town Golf Links, drawing the eyes of the world to Hilton Head Island.
The answer is the coronavirus.
The pandemic that has turned the world upside down — making the 52nd Heritage a star-studded PGA Tour event with no fans there to see it in person — has turned Nantz around.
“We’re set back, let’s call it 60 feet,” Nantz said of the tower at the storied 18th green on the windswept shore of Calibogue Sound.
In part, it’s because with no fans or the typical hubbub down below, players stroking putts worth tens of thousands of dollars might be bothered by Nantz’s familiar voice.
“My window overlooks the harbor and the lighthouse,” Nantz said Friday morning from a villa in the heart of Sea Pines, where he is hunkering down with family.
“But I have a little patio deck off the back of the tower, and if I wanted to, I could definitely get up with my headset and peer out the back and see people.
“I am blocked a little bit by the camera tower, depending on the pin location. I’ll probably just stay in my place and react off the monitor.”
For Saturday and Sunday’s live coverage scheduled for 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., Nantz will sit alone in a pee-wee sized tower wrapped in white, looking at the Harbour Town Lighthouse and feeding seamlessly off the banter of analyst Nick Faldo, who’s watching in Orlando.
Next door in his own tower on the 18th will be camera operator Erik Leidal — who captured the spine-tingling moment that golf changed forever when Tiger Woods walked up the hill at Augusta National to embrace his ailing dad, Earl, after winning the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes.
“Again, practicing social distancing,” Nantz said.
CBS Sports has half its normal crew of 80 on the ground. The “CBS Village” of 18-wheelers, truck-sized generators, mobile offices and catering tent is set up in a different location this year, but Nantz can’t go there.
“I’m in the Blue Group,” he said. “The Red Group , which has been tested, has to kind of stay together and I am not allowed to be on the compound.”
Lance Barrow, coordinating producer of golf on CBS and winner of 12 Emmy Awards, is calling the shots. But this is to be his swan song for a quarter century of presenting Hilton Head to the world. Golf.com reported in December that Barrow will step down after this season.
Hilton Head home
Nantz will spend Father’s Day working on Hilton Head with his wife, Courtney, her mother, and his two young children, Finley, 6, and Jameson, 4.
It’s his 35th year of working the Heritage.
The family has ventured out in their masks to eat, but only to places with outdoor seating. And they are not eating out with local friends like Gregg and Lindy Russell as they normally would.
This is Week 2 of 11 consecutive weeks of PGA Tour events. The Nantz family has moved for the summer from California to northeast Ohio so he can avoid the wear and tear of cross-country flights every weekend.
That travel has shown that not everyone is taking the coronavirus as seriously as the PGA Tour and CBS Sports, with masks and social distancing.
“My scope here is that in the last 11 days, I’ve been in California, Ohio, Texas and South Carolina, and it’s just interesting to see how some parts of the country are more strict, and more vigilant than others,” Nantz said. “It’s more open here. Definitely more open.”
He said he finds businesses doing a good job of protecting customers with signage and masks.
And the family has been able to get out on the beach.
“We have our bikes, which is part of the charm and tradition of being here,” Nantz said.
Hilton Head was a childhood gemstone for his daughter Caroline, now a 26-year-old graduate of “the other USC” in California, with a longtime boyfriend assigned to the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Now it’s Finley and Jameson’s turn.
“They, just like their older ‘Sissy,’ as they call her, are all-in on Hilton Head,” Nantz said. “They’ve been talking about it since April. And it has delivered. It’s everything they want it to be. It’s their favorite place.”
‘Radio’
Since his last visit to Hilton Head, Nantz has lost a friend who he helped make famous.
James “Radio” Kennedy’s remarkable life ended in his hometown of Anderson last December.
Nantz once said, “Radio is the most successful person I’ve met in my life.”
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Radio was a special-needs person who could not read or write, yet he touched the whole world with a zest for life portrayed by Gary Smith in Sports Illustrated, and the movie, “Radio.”
Radio and the coach who befriended him half a century ago, Harold Jones, were regular guests of Nantz at the Heritage, roving examples of unconditional love.
“I couldn’t attend the funeral but I saw coverage of it,” Nantz said.
“And ‘Cool Rock,’ one of Radio’s brothers, wore a CBS Sports jacket that I’d given Radio years ago. He wore it to the funeral.”
That familiar CBS Sports logo brings a bit of normalcy this year to Hilton Head, even if the anchor has his back turned to the action.
“We definitely have a history here, a proud history,” Nantz said, “and we’ll do everything we can to represent this community in the most beautiful light we can.”
This story was originally published June 20, 2020 at 1:27 PM.
