Two years ago, on a blisteringly hot practice range at the U.S. Open, Johnson Wagner arrived.
It wasn’t that Wagner was a stranger to these parts before arriving in Pinehurst — Wagner had played in two U.S. Opens, in 2004 and 2007, before arriving at the national championship as a broadcaster in 2024. Before joining Golf Channel in 2020, he’d been a successful PGA Tour player for more than a decade, earning $12.5 million on the course and winning three times.
But it wasn’t until that U.S. Open at Pinehurst, weeks after the launch of his now-infamous on-course segments at Golf Channel, that Wagner transformed from a TV analyst into an internet sensation.
He stuck out on the range, wearing a light-blue NBC Sports polo over his six-foot-three frame, his jet-black mustache glistening in the sun. And, because he stuck out, it wasn’t long before the well-wishers arrived. Fellow broadcasters first, then fellow media members, and before long, players and caddies.
It had been a dizzying few weeks for Wagner in the lead-up to that U.S. Open. First, at the Players Championship, Golf Channel had announced plans for Wagner to try out a new content idea: “acting out” the biggest golf stories of the day. At the time, it seemed as though Wagner would be utilizing his playing pedigree to take fans deeper into the biggest shots and moments. But a different outcome had materialized by Friday afternoon.
After a few days of flubbed chips and goofy laughs, cameras captured Wagner heaving golf balls into a bank along the left side of the 7th hole at TPC Sawgrass with a crow-hop. One viral video led to another, and then another, and then, finally, to Tuesday at Pinehurst, when every person he encountered shared the same sentiment with a grin.
“Thanks for the laugh.”
Two years later, that Tuesday at Pinehurst stands out as the moment everything changed for Wagner.
After two years of viral hits on Golf Channel, sources confirmed that CBS had hired Wagner as an on-course analyst, replacing Colt Knost as the network’s No. 2 “walking reporter” behind industry legend Dottie Pepper.
Wagner’s ascension at CBS ends an offseason of transition for the network following the retirement of longtime analyst Ian Baker-Finch. Baker-Finch’s spot in the CBS “super booth” will be filled by Knost, who moves upstairs after five years as an on-course analyst for the network, and Knost’s spot on the course will be filled by Wagner. According to the same sources, Wagner will not continue in his viral role on Live From, though he could reprise segments in a similar style for CBS.
How Dottie Pepper became CBS Golf’s unflinching voice of reason
By:
James Colgan
For CBS, the previous sentence is the only case it needs to justify Wagner’s hiring. Most viewers know of Wagner in late 2025 solely for his social media escapades, which is to say they know him principally as a form of comedic relief. Wagner won’t do much to dispute those accusations: His hiring at CBS would not have been possible without the viral, on-course segments that have dominated social media over the last two years, and hell, he certainly looks the part. His stocky, mustached build gives him the general appearance of a newsman from the 1970s, while his penchant for hosel-adjacent short-game shots is unmatched in the current (or former) golf media. CBS won’t dispute the value of Wagner’s comedic timing, either: Laughter can be medicine during the dull hours of a mid-July PGA Tour telecast, and Wagner’s ability to create viral moments works in a media environment increasingly dominated by “personalities.”
But the real upside of Wagner’s hiring at CBS has little to do with his current standing as a golf media chucklehead. Perhaps Wagner’s finest moment as a broadcaster arrived a year before anyone knew him as a TV talking head: His multi-minute monologue lambasting PGA Tour leadership and its messaging after the astonishing PGA Tour/PIF merger of June 6, 2023. Wagner will be entering a job defined above all by his ability to communicate his thoughts and feelings honestly, and in a sports TV world often more concerned about the athletes than the audience, Wagner’s ability to access his candor represents a potential goldmine for CBS.
Of course, it’s possible you didn’t know that. One of the chief pitfalls of social media is its tendency to flatten our perspective of the world around us. In an environment built upon attention-sucking algorithms and bite-sized pieces of content, we have been engineered to see people on social media as two-dimensional caricatures.
Wagner’s biggest opportunity and steepest challenge at CBS will be transforming from the former to the latter — and though CBS won’t say it, they’re betting he will.
***
On Sunday evening at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst in 2024, I found Johnson Wagner on the brink of changing hearts and minds. The championship had ended long before, and now, as he stood in the darkness next to the 18th green, Wagner was due to deliver the last of his on-course segments for the week.
It’d been another week of lung-piercing disasters for Wagner at the national championship. His Golf Channel co-hosts could hardly suppress their laughter as the latest laugh-track of flubbed chips and dinked putts rolled across the screen — and Wagner couldn’t, either. He took the week in stride, watching as his social media following multiplied under his own misfortune.
Now, on Sunday, it was time for the granddaddy of ’em all: Wagner’s attempt to recreate Bryson DeChambeau’s impossible shot from the greenside bunker on the 18th hole to win the U.S. Open. As the crew waited, I watched as one cameraman alerted another — who stood atop the Pinehurst clubhouse, some 100 yards away — to be on high alert for a ball in his direction. Soon, DeChambeau arrived in a cart clutching the trophy, and the cameras lit up.
After a short preamble and some goading by DeChambeau, Wagner reached for his wedge and settled into the sand. A few seconds later, he splashed out of the dirt and watched as his ball soared into the sky, landed on the cement putting surface and came to rest three feet from the flag … inside of DeChambeau’s own mark from just hours earlier.
I’d like to think Wagner was surprised as his ball settled, ending his week with one last viral video — this time as the U.S. Open hero.
But maybe that was just me.
