Frank Chirkinian, 84, Father of Televised Golf

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Published: March 5, 2011



Frank Chirkinian, who defined televised golf as the innovative executive producer and director for CBS’s coverage of the Masters tournament for 38 consecutive years, died Friday at his home in North Palm Beach, Fla. He was 84.

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Marc Serota for The New York Times

Frank Chirkanian






The cause was cancer, CBS Sports said on its Web site.
When Mr. Chirkinian first oversaw CBS’s coverage of the Masters at Augusta National in 1959, televised golf was a black-and-white affair with bulky stationary cameras.
Mr. Chirkinian transformed it into an imaginative spectacle, using more than two dozen mobile cameras as well as a camera in a blimp along with split screens showing two golfers putting at the same time. He cut briskly from hole to hole. He showed his audience where the leaders stood in relation to par as play progressed, not simply their total score, and he placed microphones on the greens to pick up chatter between the golfers and their caddies.
He was a commanding presence, known as the Ayatollah for his often brusque orders to his production crew and to the CBS announcers on the course.
“Pat Summerall gave me the name in the late 1970s, when the Shah of Iran was deposed and replaced by Khomeini,” Mr. Chirkinian told Golf Digest in a 2003 interview. “I admit, reluctantly, that I enjoyed the nickname. If nothing else, it beat being called Adolf.”
He recalled: “In rehearsals I was profane as could be. I ripped everybody. We had seven announcers all wanting air time, and it was important they remember I was the boss. I treated my crew almost like children, and let’s face it, sometimes children need to be spanked. It was a form of tough love.”
When Brent Musburger broadcast the Masters for the first time, Mr. Chirkinian feared that Mr. Musburger’s enthusiasm might overwhelm the stately aura of the course. As he related it to The New York Times, he told Mr. Musburger, “I’ll kill you if you raise your voice one-half a decibel.”
Mr. Chirkinian, who also directed coverage of the Winter Olympics, the United States Open tennis tournament, college and pro football, auto racing and thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown for CBS Sports, was a four-time Emmy recipient. He was elected last month to the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, Fla., and will be posthumously inducted in May.
“Frank is universally regarded as the father of golf television,” Jim Nantz, CBS’s longtime lead golf announcer, told the PGA Tour Web site this year. “He invented it. He took a sport that no one knew how to televise and made it interesting. He brought the Masters tournament to life.”
Mr. Chirkinian grew up in Philadelphia, a son of Armenian immigrants. He left the University of Pennsylvania in 1950 to take an assistant director’s post at WCAU-TV, the CBS station in Philadelphia, handling a variety of programs, including musicals and cooking shows.
When he impressed CBS management as the director of the 1958 P.G.A. Championship coverage in Havertown, Pa., he was hired to work full time for the network.
For many years while overseeing the Masters, Mr. Chirkinian lived in Augusta. A fine golfer in his own right, in recent years he was part owner of Emerald Dunes Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.
He is survived by his wife, Mary Jane, and their son, Frank Jr., The Palm Beach Post said.
Notwithstanding his aura of dominance, Mr. Chirkinian was determined to let the game of golf show itself off without being overwhelmed by clever TV techniques.
“I showed lots and lots of golfers and lots and lots of golf shots,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1995, “and I try never to subordinate the event to my ego. When I die, I want my epitaph to read, ‘He stayed out of the way.’ ”