‘I crossed the line': Kevin Kisner apologizes for unusual CBS Masters criticism

Kevin Kisner apologized for criticizing CBS' Masters coverage.Fore Play podcast

In the aftermath of Rory McIlroy’s Masters victory, Kevin Kisner made a guest appearance on Barstool Sports’ Fore Play podcast to break down the week that was.

The nearly two-hour conversation covered a lot of bases: Rory’s triumph, Scottie Scheffler and Justin Rose’s near-miss, and other big moments. But when the discussion turned to the broadcast, Kisner went on a viral, profanity-laden rant about what he believed to be CBS’ shortcomings.

“I have a very biased opinion so I want to go ahead and put that out there before I start since I work for the other network,” Kisner began. “And I was so f—ing confused the entire time by trying to keep up with the behind-the-scenes CBS feed. They’re literally showing s— that I knew happened ten minutes ago all day long. It was so bad that I in fact texted Colt Knost during the show and said, ‘Do you all ever show a live shot?’ I’m better off following the f—ing app than following your feed.’”

“So your entire Masters coverage is a fantasy world. It’s bulls–t,” Kisner continued. “Whatever we all watch has already happened seven minutes ago. Could you imagine watching the f—ing Super Bowl and being like, ‘Oh yeah, Tom Brady threw that touchdown seven minutes ago, we’re going to act like it’s live here so our announcers can sound really smart and we’re going to sit here and he’s going to throw it wide open down the middle but it actually happened seven minutes ago and everyone in the stadium’s taking a p—. What are we doing, man?”

Kisner, who became a lead golf analyst for NBC in 2024, was onsite at Augusta National working as a lead analyst for Sirius XM’s Masters broadcast team. Beyond serving as an incendiary bit of post-Masters commentary, his comments were extraordinarily unusual for a man serving as an employee of one of the PGA Tour broadcast partners, who rarely, if ever, air public criticisms of one another.

“You have no commercials,” Kisner said. “Play live shots. I don’t know. Our production team at NBC prides themselves on playing every shot that they possibly can live. And we talk about with Dan Hicks, when we can’t, we have to say a moment ago, because we’re trying to make the whole movie make sense, right? We don’t want to show you a tap-in on 16 and go ‘Oh yeah, he’s already hitting his shot on 17’ because obviously he has to walk over there. I have no idea what they’re doing. Literally no idea. They’re showing every shot on tape. It’s incredible. I don’t even know how the announcers call it.”