How Johnson Wagner duffed his way to golf-TV stardom

ALL QUIET ON THE 18TH GREEN

Two hours after Bryson DeChambeau won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst last June, I found him standing in the darkness of the bunker that fronts the 18th green, next to the golf world’s most beloved reenactor, Johnson Wagner.

I was one of maybe two dozen people who witnessed the high watermark of Wagner’s broadcast career, a stuck-to-three-feet sand shot from the same spot where DeChambeau had recorded the shot of his life just hours earlier. In many ways, it was that shot — and not the highlight reel of shanks, flubs and chunks that preceded it — that spawned Golf Channel’s newest content series, highlighting the greatest Tiger Woods shots from his historic 2000 run.

The new series, which will run on Golf Central during this week’s Truist Championship, offers a glimpse into Wagner’s growing stardom as a golf TV everyman, taking him to four settings in the U.S. and Canada where he will try to replicate some of Woods’ most historic shots.

“[Golf Channel EP Matt Hegarty] was like, ‘How would you feel about traveling around and recreating some of Tiger’s best shots?’ And I was like, ‘Can we start in Maui and at St. Andrews?’” Wagner said with a laugh. “He said, ‘No, we have two weeks.’ And so we were off.”

Wagner’s TV career has seen a steady rise from its humble beginnings as a Golf Channel fill-in, but in many ways the former pro is a perfect fit for Golf Channel’s charge into the future, which was the subject of GOLF.com’s conversation with the man himself (which first ran in yesterday’s Hot Mic Newsletter; you may subscribe below.)

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MEA CULPA

Wagner has been but a side character in the broader machinations of golf television over these last 12 months, but his mustachioed brand of celebrity has seen a noticeable rise in status. The cause? Wagner’s on-air reenactments of the greatest, most challenging and most death-defying shots from golf’s biggest events — and his affinity for utter disaster while doing them.

“People will stop me and they’re like, ‘I love what you’re doing. You’re like, you’re doing so much great stuff for golf, and thank you so much,’” Wagner said, sounding somewhat incredulous. “I keep I keep telling people, I wish people would have loved to watch me skull, duff and shank chips back when I played, because I would’ve had a lot more people following me.”

Wagner, who played for a dozen years on the PGA Tour and recorded three wins, knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.  This reaction, after all, was what he was seeking when he first started pressing his agent to pursue broadcast opportunities at the end of his playing career.

Wagner always figured he’d be a good fit on golf TV, where big personalities and nerdy conversations go hand-in-hand. As his playing career wound down, he was spurred on by former player-turned-broadcaster Peter Jacobsen, who saw Wagner’s plainspoken nature as a natural fit on the golf-TV airwaves.

As Wagner looked for his first gig in the media business, he stumbled into a round of golf with SiriusXM’s Taylor Zarzour, who offered to help Wagner get his foot in the door at the PGA Tour’s burgeoning new streaming operation, PGA Tour Live.

THE BEGINNING

After a strong performance as a fill-in at PGA Tour Live turned heads, Wagner got a call from a friend a Golf Channel: Would he like to fill in for them, too? Before long, Wagner received a full-time offer from the network, serving as an analyst on a variety of Golf Channel studio shows.

His facial hair immediately earned him notice in the chair at Golf Channel; his reputation as an analyst unafraid of the occasional blistering opinion or harsh critique followed soon after. One notable example came in the aftermath of the PGA Tour/PIF agreement. Wagner’s on-air soliloquy criticizing the Tour’s handling of the situation went viral, and reflected the kind of on-air backbone that has served him well…even if his critiques haven’t always been as well-received.

“I don’t want to say anything I wouldn’t say straight to a person’s face,” Wagner says. “If I offend somebody, I’m not meaning to do it, I just get paid to talk about golf, and sometimes the way I feel about something is offensive.”

‘DISHEVELED’

Thankfully, most of the golf world delights when they see Wagner. Sober analysis may pay his checks, but his on-air reenactments have made him a cult celebrity. 

The tradition started as a happy accident at the Players Championship last year, when Wagner was sent into the field to provide on-the-ground analysis on the day’s most pressing moments. He started the assignment with a reenactment of a tricky Xander Schauffele chip. Wagner wasn’t warmed up, and the resulting shot was a hosel-rocket. After the segment was over, his producer, Andrew Bradley, fell into an existential spiral.

“Andrew was disheveled,” Wagner says with a grin. “He was like, ‘Man, I really wanted you to hit good shots. I hope you don’t get crushed for this on social media.’”

By the time they returned to the hotel, though, something had changed.

“He said, ‘You need to log on right now, because it’s all positive,’” Wagner says. “At that point, we knew we had something special. If I hit a good shot, people enjoy it, but if I hit a bad shot, they enjoy it more.”

SCREW-UPS

Wagner is quick to point out that he does not try to hit poor shots. But thankfully his paycheck also no longer depends upon him hitting good ones.

“I think sometimes you see some of these short-game shots executed in a major championship and wonder, ‘What I could do from there?’” Wagner says. “And then, boom, I come on screen, and I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna try to hit a shot off the tightest, firmest fairway I’ve ever seen, and pitch over this bunker with spin.’”

This is the secret sauce for Wagner — and it has nothing to do with the difficulty of the shot or the potential of him screwing it up. What separates Wagner is not his humanity, but his willingness to show it.

“When it goes wrong, the people back home can relate to it,” he says. “They feel like I’m relating to their experience.”