Lanny Wadkins is calling time on his career in the broadcast booth for PGA Tour Champions events after 13 seasons behind the microphone.
The 21-time PGA Tour winner is the lead analyst for Golf Channel on the seniors circuit, and is in the booth for the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club.
Wadkins, who will turn 75 in December, revealed in an exclusive interview with Golfweek that he will hang up his microphone in January after calling the Mitsubishi Electric Championship – the first event of the 2025 PGA Tour Campions season.
“I’ve had my run,” 1977 PGA Championship winner Wadkins told Golfweek. “It’s time.”
A Wold Golf Hall of Fame inductee in 2009, Wadkins says in his wide-ranging interview that the impending change in broadcasts for both the PGA Tour Champions and Korn Ferry Tour was also a factor.
Form next season, events on those two tours will be called from a new studio next to the PGA Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, rather than at the golf course venue.
Wadkins is not much of a fan of the new plans, feeling that the broadcast may lose something by not having boots on the ground at the tournament venue.
“I think that telecast is going to be losing something for all the positives that they can come up with,” Wadkins said.
“I think the personal interaction with the players is one of the best things you can do.
“You’re able to get more info from them on what’s going on with their games, who they’re working with, how they’re hitting it, and what they’re trying to achieve, everything else.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Former Ryder Cup captain Wadkins is also not a fan of flying from his Dallas residence to Jacksonville over 15 times a year just to work in a studio well away from the action.
He’s getting a taste of the new ways this week as, although he’s in Phoenix, he’s not in what he would call a full booth set-up.
“I’m going to call this tournament, which is arguably the biggest on the Champions Tour, and I’ll sit in the compound, a little 10-by-10 windowless room, and call it off monitors,” Wadkins added. “You know, they’ve just taken it in that direction.”
Wadkins also talked about his golf course design work that he’ll continue with when he hangs up his microphone.
A successor for Wadkins…
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