"good guy" Tom Watson is the reason Gary McCord was banned from broadcasting the Masters

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Gary McCord was banned from the Masters after joking the greens were "bikini waxed" — and it all started with a handwritten letter from former champion Tom Watson

During the 1994 Masters broadcast on CBS, Gary McCord made a cheeky remark about the speed of Augusta National’s greens.

While it got laughs on air, it didn’t sit well with Augusta officials — or with two-time Masters champion Tom Watson, who fired off a letter demanding McCord be removed. Months later, McCord was off the Masters for good.

It all went down during the final round of the 1994 Masters, when McCord was commentating as Jose Maria Olazabal lined up a putt on the 17th green. Trying to capture how slick the greens were, McCord quipped: “I don’t think they mow these greens, I think they bikini wax them.” It was a classic McCord line — irreverent, playful — but Augusta National, known for its reverence and tradition, wasn’t laughing.

Initially, there was no formal backlash. Neal Pilson, CBS Sports president at the time, was even seated next to McCord and found the comment amusing. But things changed when Tom Watson got involved. The eight-time major winner, and two-time Masters champion, sent a handwritten letter to CBS golf producer Frank Chirkinian.

“I get called into Frank’s office and he goes, ‘Close the door.’ So I close the door, and he throws me a letter, and it’s written in pencil,” McCord said in the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers. “And I look at the letter, it says addressed to Augusta National. And it says, ‘We need to eradicate this lesion on golf. He is the Howard Stern of golf and we need to pay attention to this and what he said,’ signed Tom Watson.”

When Chirkinian summoned McCord and showed him the letter, the writing was on the wall. Augusta National — famously protective of the Masters’ image — was reportedly considering action, and CBS made no move to stand behind its veteran commentator. A few months later, McCord was quietly pulled from all future Masters coverage, though he remained a staple of CBS’s golf broadcasts until 2019.


The controversy didn’t end there. At the Pebble Beach Pro-Am the next year, McCord confronted Watson about the letter. He was disappointed Watson hadn’t come to him directly before escalating the issue to Augusta officials. Despite the tension, the two later patched things up and now maintain a cordial relationship.

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