Colt Knost opens up on CBS tower promotion, TV goals, criticism

Above all, Colt Knost’s job takes him places.

It asks him to visit three of the most beautiful golf courses on earth each year: Augusta National, Riviera and Pebble Beach. It requires his presence at two majors and at least two-thirds of the meaningful golf events on the calendar. It sees him traverse from the corrugated steel city of the Phoenix Open to the treeless expanse of the Scottish Open, and just about every golf setting in between.

But if you want to know what makes Colt Knost qualified to be the kind of professional golf broadcaster promoted to CBS’s “super tower” on Wednesday morning — if you want to understand why he gets to fly to all the pretty and important places in the golf world just to talk about them — you really ought to ask him about somewhere else. Somewhere … less revered.

The John Deere.

“John Deere week is, like, a sneaky favorite of mine, and it’s honestly because of one restaurant there,” Knost says with a chuckle. “It’s called Duck City. And, I mean, the chef — Chef Jeremy — who has been there forever, he took it over from his dad, Chef Charles. I mean, it looks like player dining every time you walk in there.”

Duck City is a special place to Knost, and his daily 7 p.m. table is one of the rhythms of the yearly schedule that keeps his personal golf world spinning (to say nothing of Duck City’s famed Veal Jalapeno — Knost’s favorite). But his certainty in singling out John Deere week over all of the glorious places listed above? That’s the special sauce.

“It surprises everyone,” Knost said. “It’s not the greatest field in the world, but every year we turn it into such a fun week.”

In most ways, the work of a successful sports television analyst is perspective. Emerson said a man is measured “by the angle at which he looks at objects,” and if that’s true, then a good sports TV voice is measured by his acuteness, his separation from the bland bromides and listless axioms — “boy, he’s a great driver of the golf ball” — that have filled the hours of golf telecasts since the beginning of time.

In other words, the work of a successful sports TV voice requires the skill to visit Augusta National but the willingness to single out the John Deere.

On Wednesday morning, Knost’s acuteness was recognized in the form of a promotion from his bosses at CBS. He will join the “super tower” with Frank Nobilo, Trevor Immelman and Jim Nantz in 2026, replacing the retired Ian Baker-Finch. The new job is Knost’s third since joining golf media after a successful career as a touring pro, the latest in a meteoric rise from a golfer with a good sense of humor to one of the narrators of pro golf.

Knost admits he is a work in progress as a broadcaster, but the lessons that have colored in the lines of his first years in the booth show plenty of promise.

“I remember, after the first couple tournaments I did as a tryout, [legendary CBS Sports producer Jim Rikhoff] sent me this awesome text basically saying, ‘Look, we hired you because of who you are and because of who we know, and I want you to be that way on air.'”

The throughline of Rikhoff’s message?

“If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, but you can’t be somebody different,” Knost remembers. He took it to heart.

He learned quickly that it can be hard to be your most honest self before an audience of a few million TV-watchers. Criticism circulates quickly, even when it’s warranted.

“Charles Barkley is one of my broadcasting heroes, and he said it best,” Knost said. “He told me, ‘you can praise these guys 90 percent of the time, and they’ll never call and say thanks, but the second you criticize them, they’re gonna call you and wear you out. You just got to be prepared for it.'”

It’s an added challenge for Knost. When Barkley criticizes hoopers, he’s largely talking about men one-third his age; when Knost criticizes golfers, he’s often talking about his friends.

How does he manage? The honest answer is that it’s hard. The lines in sports television are difficult to navigate for every former athlete, even if the core requirements of honesty and objectivity are clear. Knost is expected to speak with candor within milliseconds of witnessing decisions that decide fortunes and legacies. Sometimes those decisions are mistakes, and it is his job to say so.

“It’s never anything personal against them,” Knost said. “But if a player ever has an issue with something I said, I’m always happy to talk about it.”

Evidently, it’s working. Knost’s jump into the CBS booth is his third promotion in half a decade working in golf TV. His responsibilities will expand from covering one group to covering the entire field. His dream of one day ascending into the highest office in golf television, lead analyst, just received a jolt.

“Look, there’s the resume factor,” Knost says, acknowledging golf’s long-standing tradition of hiring only major champions for the lead analyst role. “But I think I could absolutely do it one day.”

Knost isn’t a major winner, not unless you’re counting U.S. Amateurs, but he’s okay with that. If he gets the lead analyst job one day, it won’t be because his brain can approximate a major-winner. It’ll be precisely because it can’t — because Knost sees things that some major winners don’t.

Like Duck City at the John Deere.