Peter Kostis was always one to tell it like it is during his 30-year golf broadcast career. That hasn’t changed in his post-TV career. In a tell-all interview with No Laying Up, Kostis held nothing back regarding the controversial end to his career as an on-course announcer for CBS, particularly the role he says the PGA Tour had in CBS not re-upping his contract.

Kostis — along with fellow CBS mainstay Gary McCord — were informed in October their contracts with the network would not be renewed. Kostis believes the decision was largely motivated by pressure from the Tour.

“The Tour wants more control over what’s being said,” Kostis said. “I think they want more cheerleaders on the telecast.”

Kostis alluded to a winner’s interview he conducted with an unidentified Tour rookie to illustrate the Tour’s influence on broadcasts. He congratulated the player and asked his thoughts knowing he had a spot in the Masters in addition to his two-year Tour exemption. Kostis said CBS executives called him following the tournament — after Tour commissioner Jay Monahan had called CBS to complain about Kostis’ line of questioning — and was reprimanded for neglecting to mention the FedEx Cup.

“The commissioner was upset that I didn’t say first off that he had won 500 FedEx Cup points,” Kostis said. “And he didn’t want me talking about majors.”

CBS Sports did not immediately respond to GOLF.com’s request for comment. The PGA Tour had no comment.

Kostis said he continued to ignore the FedEx Cup in his post-round interviews with winners. As the season wore on, he said he was phased out of his role.

Kostis, who is 73, speculated that the Tour also applied pressure on CBS to “get younger” with their golf broadcasters.

“I think the Tour was looking, as I was told, they wanted the announcing crew to get younger so younger players could be able to relate to the announcers and vice versa,” Kostis said. “I don’t agree with that in any way shape or form, but I think that was the initial catalyst for everything.”

There have been few answers for Kostis on the reasons for his dismissal. Kostis claimed he still hasn’t received a straight answer from CBS.

“I asked [CBS Sports chairman] Sean McManus why he was doing it,” Kostis said. “He said, ‘We just feel like things have gotten a bit stale and we want to go in a different direction … He denies it now, but that was the exact quote.”

CBS pushed for Kostis to work through the Waste Management Phoenix Open so they could give him a proper “retirement” send off. Kostis said he declined the offer for a few reasons, one being that he wasn’t retiring, but rather being pushed out.

“I got the feeling that it was more about saving face for them than trying to do something nice for me,” Kostis said.

You can listen to Kostis’ complete interview with No Laying Up here.

To receive GOLF’s all-new newsletters, subscribe for free here.

In an explosive interview appearance on the No Laying Up podcast, former CBS Sports reporter Peter Kostis excoriated Patrick Reed for his December rules-breaking controversy, saying he’s seen multiple instances of Reed committing similar rules violations.

“I’ve seen Patrick Reed improve his lie, up close and personal, four times now,” Kostis said, before explaining one of the situations, which happened in 2016 when Reed won The Barclays at Bethpage Black. “That’s the only time I ever shut [Gary] McCord up. He didn’t know what to say, when I said, ‘Well, the lie that I saw originally wouldn’t have allowed for this shot.’ Cause he put four or five clubs behind the ball, kinda faking whether or not he was going to hit this shot or that shot. By the time he was done, he hit a freaking 3-wood out of there. It was a sand wedge lay-up originally.”

You can hear the on-air exchange between Kostis and McCord following the alleged incident in the video below.

But it wasn’t only at The Barclays that Kostis said he witnessed what he deemed to be questionable behavior from Reed.

“I was in the tower on 16 at [the Farmers Insurance Open in] San Diego, and [Reed] hit it over the green and did the same thing,” Kostis said. “He put three or four clubs behind it, and it was really a treacherous shot and nobody had gotten it close all day long from over there. By the time he was done, I could read ‘Callaway’ on the golf ball from my tower.”

Kostis pointed to two more incidents — another in San Diego and one at the Travelers Championship in Hartford — where he claims to have seen Reed improve his lie. As for the question of whether Reed’s actions were intentional, Kostis stopped short of providing an answer.

“I’m not going to assign intent, all I’m going to tell you is what I saw,” he said.

Reed’s rules fiasco ignited the golf world in December when he was assessed a two-stroke penalty for improving his lie in a waste area at the Hero World Challenge. The ruling came after Golf Channel cameras captured Reed brushing away sand from behind his ball with two practice swings. Reed accepted the penalty and argued his actions were accidental.

“I didn’t feel like it really would have affected my lie. I mean, every time I get in the bunker I’m scared to even get my club close to it, it was that far away, but whenever you do that if it does hit the sand, just like if you’re in a hazard area and you take a practice swing and it brushes grass and the grass breaks, it’s a penalty,” Reed said. “So because of that and after seeing the video, I accept that, and it wasn’t because of any intent, I thought I was far enough away.”

In the months since, many prominent members of the golf world have voiced their opinions on Reed’s penalty. Just this week, Brooks Koepka bluntly offered his assessment of the situation.

“I don’t know what he was doing, building sandcastles in the sand, but you know where your club is,” Koepka said in a SiriusXM interview Monday. “I mean, I took three months off and I can promise you I know if I touched sand. It’s one of those things where you know, if you look at the video obviously he grazes the sand twice and then he still chops down on it.”

But with multiple alleged incidents now involving Reed, does rule-breaking run rampant on Tour?

“No. It’s rare, it’s really, really rare on the PGA Tour; 99.9 percent of the guys play by the rule book,” Kostis said. “It’s been my experience that people who are trying to get away with something think they’re invisible. That nobody’s watching, that they’re so cool doing it that nobody will get it.”

You can listen to Kostis’ complete interview on No Laying Up here, where he also discusses his exit from CBS, golf telecasts and so much more.

To receive GOLF’s all-new newsletters, subscribe for free here.

In the wake of the revelation that longtime CBS golf broadcasters Peter Kostis and Gary McCord would not have their contracts renewed, Kostis has not spoken publicly about it, other than to offer a statement that expressed his thanks to the many people he worked alongside over the course of his near-30 year career.

But on Wednesday, ScoreGolf’s Rick Young published an interview he conducted with Kostis in the wake of Kostis’ CBS dismissal, and, Kostis opened up about the disappointment he’s feeling with the network, as well as the reasons he believes are behind his firing.

Like McCord, Kostis said would have liked to have the opportunity to say a proper goodbye to fans and colleagues. “I’m surprised Gary and I didn’t get the same loyalty other announcers have received who have worked for CBS for a long time,” Kostis told Young. “That’s my biggest surprise in this whole thing. I wasn’t sure if I was going to work beyond this current television contract (2021) but it would have been nice to have a year to go out and say goodbye to fans, say goodbye to sponsors, friends we’ve met in different locations. I thought it was a little bit disrespectful.”

As to the reasoning behind the network’s personnel changes, Kostis said he can only speculate, and hasn’t been given any specifics. “All we’ve really heard is, ‘We think it’s time, we need a change, things were stale,’” Kostis said. “What was stale? ‘Well, the telecasts.’ Why is this the time now? ‘Well, it just is.’ They haven’t really given us any answers whatsoever on why we were let go.

“There’s a fine line between familiarity and staleness,” Kostis continued. “What we’ve been hearing over and over from fans since this happened is, ‘You guys are the voices of my weekends watching golf and we’ve grown to love it.’ There’s a familiarity for the viewers with the CBS team. Having said that, I don’t think it was the announcers that were stale. I believe the production has suffered over the last few years. That’s all I’m going to say. I’ll just leave it at that.”

Kostis also believes that the upcoming advent of gambling on Tour, as well as the impending expiration of the Tour’s broadcast and television rights (currently held by CBS and NBC) in 2021 played a role in his firing.

“The timing and the reason for mine and Gary’s departure are the ongoing negotiations with a new television contract,” Kostis said. “That’s involved here. I don’t know how exactly or what it could be but I do believe the next television contract is going to be radically different. I don’t have any basis for saying that other than my gut instinct. I do know the tour is gearing up to be able to handle gambling. I think it’s one of the ways they’re hoping to grow their fan base with younger people. It’s a question you’d have to ask [PGA Tour Commissioner] Jay Monahan I guess but everything I’ve seen in interviews and read points to gambling playing a big role in this next round of (television) negotiations.”

On Tuesday, it was revealed that 21-time Tour winner and former Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III would be joining CBS as a full-time analyst. A second replacement has not yet been announced.

Though Young’s interview makes it clear that Kostis is disappointed he won’t be covering the Tour on a week-to-week basis anymore, there is a silver lining: Kostis now has the time to write a book.

“It’s going to be swing and golf instruction,” Kostis explained. “But I am going to intertwine 30 years of stories from inside-the-ropes, talk about my 29 years at the Masters, times with Tiger (Woods), and my previous life with Sam Snead and some of the great people I’ve been around. Hopefully I can mesh those stories with my philosophies on instruction.”

To receive GOLF’s all-new newsletters, subscribe for free here.

Davis Love III will transition from part-time player to full-time analyst beginning in 2020.

CBS Sports announced on Tuesday that it has hired Love to be a full-time analyst to cover the PGA Tour, Masters and PGA Championship. Love will make his debut at the network’s first event of the 2020 season, the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.

“Davis is one of the most accomplished and respected players in the game of golf,” said Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports, in a release. “With his playing experience, reputation and relationships across the golf community, he brings a unique perspective and insight that will enhance our broadcasts. Davis is the perfect fit for CBS, and we look forward to him making the best broadcast team in golf even better.”

The announcement of Love joining CBS Sports comes just days after it became public that long-time on-course reporters Peter Kostis and Gary McCord were not having their contracts renewed for 2020. In an interview on the Gravy and Sleeze show on SiriusXM PGA Tour radio on Monday, McCord said McManus told him that CBS’s golf coverage had grown “stale.”

“Stale did not work for me,” McCord said in the interview. “That kind of got me riled up a bit. … I didn’t like that at all.”

Love, 55, is a 21-time winner on the PGA Tour and was 1-1 as a Ryder Cup captain. He also played in six Ryder Cups and six Presidents Cups. Love, who has lifetime status on the PGA Tour, played in nine Tour events in 2019 (making five cuts) and made six Champions Tour starts.

“I have long considered CBS Sports the gold standard in golf coverage,” Love said in the release. “Whether playing or coaching, I have always loved the team aspect of golf, and I am thrilled to now be a member of the best team in television. My playing days are not totally over, as I will play select events, but my focus now shifts to broadcasting. I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time with the men and women of CBS Sports, and I look forward to getting started in January.”

Gary McCord and Peter Kostis, two stalwarts of CBS’ golf coverage, won’t be returning in 2020.

Kostis and McCord both faced expiring contracts that will not be renewed.

A CBS spokesman released a statement confirming the news, saying “Gary and Peter have been an important part of our golf coverage for three decades. They were both outstanding teammates and we thank them for their significant contributions through the years.” Golfweek’s Geoff Shackelford first reported the news.

McCord first joined CBS Sports in 1986 as an analyst following his 13-year career on Tour and was well known for his colorful commentary alongside fellow CBS broadcaster David Feherty. Kostis had been with CBS since 1992 as an on-course reporter. Over the years, he became known for breaking down players’ swings in slow motion. In remarks to Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand, Kostis revealed the decision was made by CBS.

Two longtime faces of CBS's golf coverage are leaving the network. Gary McCord, who started in 1986, and Peter Kostis, who started in 1992, won't be with the network's PGA Tour coverage when it restarts in January. https://t.co/4VkCWLiVIB

— John Ourand (@Ourand_Puck) October 26, 2019

Kostis also provided a statement, saying “It is hard to believe it has been 30 years since the first time I walked a golf course with a microphone…offering me a front-row seat for some of the greatest moments in golf. I have been thinking quite a bit about requesting a reduced travel schedule, but CBS made my decision easier when they elected not to exercise the two-year option on my contract.”

This doesn’t mean we’ve seen the end of Kostis. In his statement, he also revealed some vague plans for what lies ahead.

“As I look to my future, it will most definitely include going back to my teaching roots, completely unfiltered, in some form or fashion (maybe a book) and I’m really excited about that!” he said.  “There are numerous new opportunities for covering golf that are very interesting.”

CBS Sports’ next broadcast is the January 2020 Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. The network’s contract with the PGA Tour is set to end in 2021. CBS, among other companies, is currently bidding for future media rights.