5 noticeable changes on CBS Golf TV broadcasts in 2026

You did not have to be a particularly skilled TV watcher to notice the most significant shift in the CBS Golf booth during the network’s coverage of the PGA Tour’s “West Coast Swing” — but you did have to be a persistent one.

The most noticeable shift of the 2026 golf season for CBS arrived at Pebble Beach late on Sunday evening, after winner Collin Morikawa had vanished into the bliss of his first victory on U.S. soil in nearly five years — and after Morikawa’s caddie Matt Urbanek had disappeared into the night with the 18th hole flag at Pebble Beach. It arrived 50 yards off the side of the 18th fairway, down a craggly outcropping of rocks and on a beach facing a steadily rising tide.

The shift’s name was Johnson Wagner, CBS Golf’s newest on-course reporter, who’d arrived to reprise his role as golf’s preeminent stunt-double. And as he surveyed the shot from the side of 18 that had delayed the end of the golf tournament for upwards of 20 minutes, the high-velocity hum of the CBS Golf broadcast stalled into a vacuum of anticipatory silence.

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With a 50-degree wedge plucked from his bag, Wagner settled his feet, steadied his grip and swung. And with that swing, we start our look into the biggest changes on CBS in 2026 — starting with the guy whose on-course heroics have taken a new tune …

5 noticeable CBS Golf changes in 2026

5. Johnson Wagner

Wagner’s addition to the CBS Golf team is, in fact, much bigger than on-course hijinks — though he earned quite a reputation for those in his time with Golf Channel and NBC. In his day job with CBS, Wagner will be the network’s third “walking reporter,” behind ace walkers Dottie Pepper and Mark Immelman. But he will moonlight doing the kind of segments that have become a golf staple over the last several years: Leaning into his experience as a pro golfer for more than two decades to recreate the biggest shots and moments of the day himself, giving fans a deeper look into their difficulty and nuance.

Wagner and CBS are still working out the particulars of those segments and how they fit into the network’s broadcasts, but they’ve already yielded plenty of entertainment. (For example, after hitting his shot from the beach, Wagner was given thirty seconds to scale the rocks at Pebble Beach before CBS cut to a break. He made it safely with five seconds to spare.)

As the new season progresses, expect Wagner’s role to expand in kind.

4. Colt Knost moves upstairs

Colt Knost’s promotion to a spot in the CBS “super tower” precipitated Wagner’s hiring at CBS — a promotion itself precipitated by longtime analyst Ian Baker-Finch’s retirement from the CBS booth after more than two decades in TV.

Knost received the call to the bullpen to fill Baker-Finch’s seat, and though there’s no replacing Baker-Finch’s role in the CBS broadcast, Knost has already brought some of his own spin to the booth. He’ll play a vital role for CBS next to fellow analysts Frank Nobilo and Trevor Immelman, and alongside play-by-play man Jim Nantz.

3. New Drones!

The PGA Tour and CBS earned an Emmy last year for the latest expansion in drone camerawork, a new technology named “Drone AR.” The new drone added a shot tracer to CBS’s existing drone complement, allowing the network to showcase tee and approach shots in a three-dimensional axis. It was immediately popular, and quickly followed up by the “shot tracer probability” lines, which leaned on the Tour’s expansive ShotLink database to predict the outcome of a tee shot (green for good, red for bad!).

In 2026, those animations are receiving another upgrade, adding analytics to the Drone AR that help explain player tendencies, course strategy and shot intent. If you were watching at Pebble Beach, you saw the first instances of these upgrades in action — though more are expected (on each of the Tour’s network broadcasts) over the course of the 2026 season.

2. B-2 Broadcast Graphics

If you were watching closely, you might have seen golf’s version of the B-2 bomber flying over the skies of Pebble Beach, Phoenix or Riviera over the last several weeks.

No, not an actual B-2 (though that would be inarguably sick) — but rather the PGA Tour’s new “Weather Applied Metrics”, which help visualize the impact of changing weather conditions by turning the invisible forces of airflow into fully visible, computer-generated graphics.

We’ve seen versions of the “Weather Applied Metrics” utilized in Tour broadcasts in the past, most notably around the 17th tee box at the Players Championship. But this new version of the technology is more robust and comprehensive than previous iterations, showcasing changes in wind, temperature and humidity to help viewers understand the changes each week.

1. A new schedule

Golf fans have witnessed the Tour’s shape-shifting schedule from up close in 2026, with The Sentry’s late cancellation in Maui and the return of the Cadillac Championship at Doral as part of March’s Florida Swing.

Those changes have had downstream effects on the Tour’s broadcasters, which have jockeyed their 2026 television schedules to accommodate the shifts. First, CBS will scoop the Cadillac from Doral, picking up a tournament at a venue where the network holds a half-century of broadcasting history. In exchange for that addition (and NBC’s loss of the Sentry), CBS will trade the Travelers Championship to NBC, helping to even out the regular-season Tour schedule.

There’s also a change on the PGA Tour’s postseason broadcast schedule. As part of the every-other-year cadence of the Tour’s broadcast rights, CBS will pick up this year’s FedEx Cup Playoffs, with coverage continuing through the Tour Championship at the end of August.