Jim Nantz

From 1975-'79, I worked for PGA professional Tony Bruno. For five years I watched, lost in admiration, as Tony ran the golf shop at Battleground Country Club in Manalapan, N.J. Tony put in 80-hour weeks doing what nearly 29,000 men and women club pros do every day: Keeping the game alive with a smile.

I have a pretty good memory.

Super Bowl V was the Colts against the Cowboys and Jim O'Brien kicked a 32 yard field goal to beat the Cowboys. I was traumatized by it. Everyone at school knew I was the only Cowboy fan in the area. I didn't want to go to school and I begged and pleaded with my parents. Those are indelible memories when you are a kid.

My father got to see the first 10 years of my career. He implored me to always appreciate people who are not operating under any sort of false pretense or who weren't caught up in their own success.

Augusta National... an oasis of career-defining moments.

I live every day the job that I dreamed of as a boy.

I can't think of anything in my profession that would mean as much. You can talk about Emmys or Super Bowls. Fifty Masters Tournaments, that would be the ultimate.

If you want to say that I am vanilla, then I can give you a long list of broadcasting giants who fall into that same category because all of them always had the same goal that is my goal to this day: It is not about me.

No matter the event, a Super Bowl, an NFL game, a rank-and-file golf tournament, there is a demand when you are live and exposed to try to get it right and do justice to the event. That's the way I have always approached it.

I want Alzheimer's. I want Lou Gehrig's disease. I want Parkinson's. I want Huntington's. I want to be the face and voice of all these neurological traumas. I want them all.

I was named first-team Jersey Shore by the Asbury Park Press, the paper I used to deliver as a young boy. I got to Houston and Coach Williams invited me to walk on the golf team. I was the 18th man on an 18-man golf team.

For more than a quarter century, I was fortunate to visit and play golf with President George H.W. Bush dozens of times, usually while paying a visit to the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.