MASON REED: Why do you think, in your own words, you're good at this job?
DOTTIE PEPPER: It's not about me. It's about the broadcast. It's not about the broadcaster. What you're doing is adding to these beautiful pictures we can now show and the story that the players have developed.
MASON: I'm Mason Reed, and this is Invested in the Game, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each episode we tell the story of remarkable people who have committed their time, resources, and emotional energy into making golf the wonderful—and sometimes maddening—game that it is.
On today's episode, I'm joined by golf legend Dottie Pepper, who you probably know as the lead walking reporter for CBS's coverage of the PGA Tour, the Masters, and the PGA Championship. Or if you're a little older like me, you may know her as an icon of the LPGA Tour, someone who won 17 times, including two majors—you know, back when it was called the Dinah Shore—an OG Solheim Cup player with an impeccable record. Did you know she was also All-American at Furman and won the New York State Amateur?
Her resume is ridiculous, and I have no doubt she'll find herself in pro golf and broadcasting halls of fame before it's all over. She's a beloved broadcaster and famously intense as a player. Dottie sat down with me in person at the Charles Schwab Women's Collegiate Invitational, a new event for us where she was a keynote speaker.
By the way, side note, Stanford won the team event, number one team in the country, and Anna Davis won the individual event. And if Anna Davis sounds familiar, yes, she won the Augusta Women's Amateur a few years ago at the age of, wait for it, 16 years old. Now she's a star at Auburn. Anyway, I could have talked to Dottie for hours, but we're committed to keeping these interviews tight out of respect for your time. We talk about her introduction to the game, her love of the game, her approach to broadcasting, and like all guests, what makes her optimistic about the future of golf. Hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did speaking with her.
Dottie Pepper, thanks for being on the pod. Appreciate you being here. We're recording this in person, which is great, great for us. I hope great for you as well. And we're overlooking a women's collegiate golf event practice round today. Ten of the top 20 teams are here. Stanford's here. Before we jump into the real content of the pod, does this bring back some memories of your Furman college days of being at a women's college event?
DOTTIE: Well, we certainly didn't play at places like Colonial very often. That's for certain. It brings back a lot of really good memories. And interestingly, the two colleges that I … universities that I went to as site visits was here in Fort Worth at TCU.
MASON: Oh wow.
DOTTIE: And then the next weekend, I traveled to Furman.
MASON: Get out of here.
DOTTIE: So I was going to wear purple and white regardless.
MASON: You should have. That would have been nice, although you may have offended some of your Furman friends. So one of the schools you didn't mention was Tulsa. Famously didn't want you.
DOTTIE: I wasn't good enough, or Dale McNamara told me I wasn't good enough.
MASON: How about that?
DOTTIE: Yeah, so that was a little burr that spurred me on.
MASON: I'm sure. You seem like someone that would have the proverbial things in the locker room that motivate you. I'm sure that one's parked somewhere in your college brain.
DOTTIE: I loved the conversation when I think of, I was a junior, and she said, "I really made a mistake with you."
MASON: Yeah, we're even now. Good. Well, I want to go backwards a little bit, and then I want to also chat with you about the future and some of your thoughts about the future of golf. But I want to talk for just a minute about your introduction to golf. And your dad, I think, was half a cup of coffee in the major leagues, incredibly top talented baseball player, top prospect. He comes back to New York, works on the family farm, but eventually the family opens a pitch and putt and a driving range that you started working at and helping around at a very young age. So was that your first introduction to golf? Was the family getting into that business?
DOTTIE: It was just a little bit earlier than that. My grandmother, my dad's mom, when her husband, my grandfather, passed very early—he was only 46 when he had a massive heart attack and died in the farmhouse—she, all of sudden, had a lot more time on her hands because the boys took over the farm. And golf was her thing. She was very athletic. She skied, strong, big German work ethic, and she played golf. And very fit.
She was about five foot 10 or like a size 12 shoe. I mean, she was a substantial …
MASON: Not to be reckoned with on the golf course. Or the ski slopes.
DOTTIE: Correct. She got to be about an 8 handicap. And me being the oldest grandchild, it was kind of a natural thing that I loved being with her. Competitive. And it was something I could do on my own. I didn't have to have somebody on the other side of a net. And she got me a series of five lessons at a golf driving range south side of Saratoga Springs, with a kind of a journeyman golf professional that came through the area every summer. I think more to play the ponies than he did to teach golf lessons. But it got me the basics. And then …
MASON: This is all before your dad opened the …
DOTTIE: This was all before, yeah. So we're really fortunate in Saratoga Springs to have two public golf facilities. Both owned by the state. One is a championship 18-hole golf course, and the other is what they call the par 29. Nine holes totaling a par of 29. And it's a great place for people that are starting the game, that have aged out of playing long, big golf courses, or just want to go out and play fast golf. It's terrific. And it's now a bike ride from my house. So I go by it.
MASON: It's still there? That course was there? OK.
DOTTIE: Both facilities are still there and now open. So actually, you know, we're sitting here in late March, and they're actually open. So that was my first round of golf, was actually played there, and then went to Brookhaven. And then in that same time, very later, dad started Duffers Den.
MASON: And so when was the first love then? I mean, did you fall in love immediately with it because it was time with your grandmother and it was, I'm assuming, enjoyable to you or … because at some point you got very good, and I have to think it started to be, I don't know when, but it has to become work, and like it starts mixing work and love when you're really, you know, which may have been a few years later.
DOTTIE: It was. So I picked up the game when I … the summer that I went from age 7 to 8. And by the time I was 12, you know, I was wanting to go play in the state junior amateur, the girls' junior. My parents said, "Ehh, because you're going to expect to win and have a bad experience." They knew me too well, obviously. So I played with a lot of older ladies in the area because there really wasn't much junior golf offered. I was really the only girl in the area that played. I ended up playing on the high school team because there was no other option.
MASON: High school boys team.
DOTTIE: High school boys team, yeah. And they only started a girls team a year before COVID. So it hasn't even … this is still very, very green up there. We've turned out a couple of rock star kids, but it's still pretty new in upstate New York to have an all-girls golf team. So it was very advantageous to have this short little course. The longest hole was 90 yards. We had a full putting green and a bunker, 250-yard driving range. It was everything that you needed to really learn the game, fall in love with the game, and then take it on to the next step. I would equate it to kind of the first couple of rungs on a ladder.
MASON: Got it. When did you know, and I think it's somewhere in that 11 to 12 range, but when did you know, and what happened that you thought, "I might be really good at this?" I mean, not just good, but really good. Was it beating the older women that you were playing with at the club consistently? And they said, you're … did somebody say, "You're really good?" Like, this is not just a fun little hobby here in Saratoga Springs.
DOTTIE: Well, yeah, that was probably it. I remember playing in a handicap tournament, and I think I had to give one of the older ladies like 14 shots, and I beat her. I thought, "Oh OK. I guess I can …"
MASON: That's not normal.
DOTTIE: Yeah, that's not really normal.
MASON: And how old were you when that happened?
DOTTIE: Probably 12. And my grandmother took me to play in competitions. So to the point that I was doing the handicaps for the Northeastern New York and the Inter-County Women's Golf League. So I learned the game on those rungs of the ladder going up. And we did it all by hand in a notebook with pencil and paper because you were going to make a mistake. But you learned how to do handicaps properly and take the best eight out of 10 or whatever the rules were at the time for indexing as they call it now. But you learned the game from its basic roots.
MASON: Love it. So it wasn't that long from that moment of beating some of the older women at the club that, just a few years later, you're winning the state amateur at age 15, 16, somewhere in that neighborhood. So if you weren't sure at 12, you were really sure at 15 or 16, probably that this is real.
DOTTIE: Well, I, you know, I skied a lot. So I never had a chance, even though I loved golf, never really got a chance to burn out because winter got in the way. I had a driving area, a little screen set up downstairs. It was actually just an old sheet that my dad rigged up, and I could hit pitch shots with the basement wasn't that tall. But I took a pretty bad fall as a junior ski instructor in that winter of '81. It was such a break of my left wrist that it led into golf season.
And I thought, "Well, I think it's time to make a decision."
MASON: Oh wow, so do you think, I didn't plan to ask you this, was there a pro ski career in your life?
DOTTIE: I would have loved to have done it, but my parents actually discouraged it because they didn't think there was any … there wasn't a whole lot of money in it. I mean it was not really self-sustaining …
MASON: There wasn't money to be made in women's golf at that time, either.
DOTTIE: That's true, but they thought it was a lot!
MASON: OK. Kind of related to this, we spoke with Andy Johnson at Fried Egg Golf recently, and he suggested that golf isn't linear and that the best golfer at age 10 may not be, likely isn't, the same best golfer at 15, is not the same best golfer at 20, 25, 30, go on. I'm sure we could identify an exception to that. Tiger was very good through most of these moments. But would you generally agree that it's not linear like that, the best player at all those different times may change? Was that true for you?
DOTTIE: That was definitely true. I think the prodigy thing is, that's a tough ask. And I think that does lead to a lot of burnout because … and look at, look at kids sports, youth sports now, you get these huge campuses dedicated to just youth sport training. And how many of them actually even excel in high school or go on to get a college scholarship or God forbid, you know, the minute numbers that play professionally at any level.
MASON: They're selling a dream to parents.
DOTTIE: Absolutely.
MASON: We could do an entire podcast on just that topic. But yeah, the prodigy narrative that is being sold is …
DOTTIE: It's actually not very healthy. I remember my dad, my dad was a gifted athlete. He signed a major league baseball contract the day he graduated from high school. And you know, I'm moving up the ranks pretty quickly. And we had this conversation that he said, "Just remember, I was the best in New York state. That made me one of 50. You're no different." And that was …
MASON: Sobering.
DOTTIE: I mean, it was a little harsh, but that's reality. There are a lot of gifted athletes.
MASON: His story is almost a cautionary tale. He's the guy on the cover of Sports Illustrated telling you, "Hey, dreams don't always happen the way you think."
DOTTIE: That's exactly right and he always, always said, "You need a backup plan." So it was "Make sure your grades are good. You've got to go to school. You got to get a four-year degree. There's no bailing out, and put it in your back pocket and then run for your dream."
MASON: One of the things that stood out to me in your book and the one of the letters to Mr. Pulver is you're updating them on your grades at school, which if you think about today and you think about somebody that had today would have your equivalent golf talent, I hope that they're talking about their grades. I've worried that maybe they're just buying into that "I'm going to be the world's best golfer, and that's what's going to happen," and for most people that's not how it ends up.
DOTTIE: I'm with you completely. And you know, it could be injury. It could be, I mean, I had a lot of kids that I played with, for example, the PGA Junior Championship. That was a really important thing for me because it was paid for by our PGA section. If you won the qualifier, the section paid for the boy and the girl champions to go to the national championship. My parents didn't have any money to send me to that tournament every year, to put me on a plane to West Palm Beach. PGA of America had such a great initiative there. Still does. But it was so important to have that as a building block and have that exposure because it just wasn't there.
MASON: So is that where you saw all these other talented golfers and said, "Oh my gosh, this is …"?
DOTTIE: I did. It was a great measuring stick, but it was also, when I look back, I still have some of those programs. That person was the best or the top 10 there, and after two years of college, they're like, "Forget it. I'm burned out. I don't like it." So many, or so, "Well, I've got this scholarship. I need to honor what I've earned, and I'm not touching a golf club again." And I think that's sad.
MASON: I think it's OK to say this, that you're famously intense. Did that ever, and I guess it's not even in the past, could be present, did that ever make it hard to feel love for the game of golf, or do you think they went hand-in-hand? How would you talk about love of the game with your intensity for competition, winning, being the best you could possibly be, a lot of the things that are important to you?
DOTTIE: I think they go very much hand-in-hand because you're passionate, intense about something that can never be perfected. So I think it's a constant trying to polish your skills, trying to become more efficient in how you prepare, how you deliver a strike to the golf ball, how can you get cleaner? It's the same thing we talk about in broadcasting is how can we just continue to get better? How can we keep the pace up? How can we just polish things, deliver more concisely? It's the same stuff with just through a different lens.
MASON: And you love the process of that as much as you do making a comment on air, just like the process of trying to get better.
DOTTIE: Yeah, I love finding out the little thing behind the scenes that will make the broadcast better. I loved digging through Mr. Pulver's brain, for example, to find what's that little thing that I could be better at? How can I get it just a little tighter?
MASON: I love it. Before I move on to talk a little bit about pro golf and broadcasting, I wanted to ask, because I just saw this today, I didn't know you almost quit as a teenager, though. So given what you just said about this commitment to trying to get better, what would the circumstances be that would have possibly had Dottie Pepper quitting golf?
DOTTIE: Oh, the shanks.
MASON: That makes sense. You had a bad phase of, as a teenager …
DOTTIE: Pretty bad. Post-winning the state junior and amateur, which came with its own weight in itself because no one had ever done that. I was not even 16 years old yet. Didn't really know where I was going to school. There were a lot of unknowns.
And I didn't have a very good year the next year, and I thought, "What in the world? Is this all just been for naught?" And you go out there, and as Hogan said, you dig it, and you find it in the dirt. And that's what I did. And I had to do that a couple of times as a professional, too. But I got to tell you, there were a lot of question marks in my mind when I went to, I didn't get through the first pre-qualifier as a newly turned professional.
So now I have one chance. I go to Sarasota, Florida, and in somewhere between driving from Saratoga Springs to Sarasota, the Shankopotamus got in the backseat of my car.
MASON: Oh my gosh.
DOTTIE: And I fought it all the way through Q school[1] in Houston.
MASON: I did not plan to talk about this …
DOTTIE: It's terrifying!
MASON: As someone recreationally that has gone through it, this is going to now be a therapy session.
DOTTIE: That's right.
MASON: Here's the thing, I wanted, now I have to ask you about this. The thing that I've told people that is so terrifying about the shanks is that even if it only was to happen once or twice in a round, you can't stop thinking about it. So you're standing over the ball, and that cannot be a healthy golf swing to be thinking "Please don't shank the ball" as opposed to "Please execute the shot I wanted." And that is what I had it for a while, and it does make you question the love of the game.
DOTTIE: It makes you question everything.
MASON: Yeah, OK. Well, I'm glad you seemed to work that. So the Shankopotamus got out of the trunk at some point, and everything worked out all right. We're going to go a little bit back and forth between pro career and broadcasting career, but I have to ask, is it odd that if my math is correct, I think you've probably been broadcasting longer than you played professionally, or it's close.
DOTTIE: By four years now.
MASON: How does it feel to think about that? That you're, you know, you're known for your professional career, but you're, I bet there's a lot of people that know you as a broadcaster and don't know you quite as well as a professional golfer, which even just saying that speaks to how good of a broadcaster you are, but we'll cover that separately.
DOTTIE: Thank you. I fortunately have a wonderful relationship with my big brother Roger Maltbie, and Roger, much the same. When I went to NBC in 2004, there was just a natural fit. We became really good pals. And he said, "Kid, if you keep doing this, there's going to be a day that people will recognize you more for your broadcasting than you did for your playing career." And you know, Roger won the Memorial[2]. He was a phenomenal player.
But people know Roger Maltbie …
MASON: … as the guy on TV that's calling golf.
DOTTIE: … as the guy on TV. Right. I remember when I got to that season, so four years ago when it all evened up. So now I've been broadcasting as long as I was playing. And now I'm an election cycle past that.
MASON: Yeah, the balances are tilting towards broadcasting.
DOTTIE: And I now look at some of these kids that were coming out of PGAU[3] and all that, and they would have never known me as a player.
MASON: No. Someone has to tell them, "Hey, you know, Dottie was actually pretty good …"
DOTTIE: Yeah, she actually won a couple majors. Yeah, so I'm there.
MASON: Are you OK with that?
DOTTIE: I'm totally good with that. But I think you have to earn it every day. I think my philosophy about broadcasting is as much the same as it was about playing. If you rest on your laurels for one day, you're going to get smacked. Something's not going to go well.
MASON: And I don't know the broadcasting world that well, but I assume that if you're not doing a good job, they'll find somebody that they think will do a good job. Like this is not just a free pass for forever. It's kind of a cutthroat world out there.
DOTTIE: Probably same thing in your world?
MASON: It's about results.
DOTTIE: Correct.
MASON: There's not free lunches?
DOTTIE: No, and there's not that many of these jobs, and you better keep working to keep that job.
MASON: Got it, which is a good segue to … I wanted to ask you about how you measure success as a broadcaster because obviously if you're playing golf, you can say, "I've won 17 tournaments, or I shot a 65" or whatever it is. It's very clear how you performed. How do you figure out that you're doing well as a broadcaster beyond I'm assuming a director, Lance or Tommy or somebody, is saying, "I'm telling you you're doing a good job" or "I'm telling you these three things stink," and so you feel like that feedback is objective. But how do you figure out how you're doing? Where's the scorecard on broadcasting?
DOTTIE: Tommy would definitely tell you if you weren't very good at something. I remember my first, it was a Samsung Women's Girl Golf Championship. We were in Palm Desert. It was the first time I'd been in an outer tower. So I wasn't in the 18th tower. So he's prepping me to move forward with men's golf. So he's giving me more skill sets to start working on.
MASON: Got it. He's giving you reps at what you'll be …
DOTTIE: Absolutely. And I was like, "Oh my gosh." Because I still believe that the outer tower is the hardest job there is. The 18th tower, it's all coming to you. And it's all coming to you generally in real time. A lot of it's not on tape. The outer towers, calling holes, I think is more difficult. And I was terrible. And he told me that.
MASON: OK.
DOTTIE: And that was, OK, I've got to get better. I'm going to go talk to the people who do this and do it really well. So I leaned on Gary Koch and I asked questions and I went back and he set me up with all sort of video. You can listen, and you can watch, and I ended up getting a lot better.
Golf is much the same way, and my whole philosophy now on "Am I doing a good job?" goes back to "Is the information I'm giving additive to the show? Is it succinct? Am I continuing to leave the shot, the contact, the integrity of the shot open so people can hear the whoosh, and then you can pick up your pace of speaking again? Have I told the viewer something they didn't already know?" Those are my barometers. And have I done it succinctly? That was always Judy Rankin's thing, was to say as much as you can in as few words as possible.
MASON: I know she was a big role model.
DOTTIE: Huge role model for me.
MASON: I wanted to ask you if, and you probably are not going to want to answer this or at least not the way I'd like you to, because you're very humble. I think I know why you're good at broadcasting, but why do you think you're good at broadcasting? And I'd say it even differently, it seems, and I've asked around and I know from my personal experience that I think you're universally liked, which is hard to do particularly in today's world. A couple of instances notwithstanding, I think you are pretty universally liked. Why do you think, in your own words, that you're good at this job?
DOTTIE: It's not about me. It's about the broadcast. I just did this on a piece that's going to run on Golf Channel about the LPGA's 75th anniversary. And if announcers are making it about themselves, I don't think it's good television.
MASON: Is that the we/us thing?
DOTTIE: Yes.
MASON: So maybe explain what that the we/us is.
DOTTIE: So for example, when we were coming to the Ryder Cup when I was at NBC, the one thing Tommy Roy never wanted to hear was, as an American broadcaster, "we" or "us." It's about the competition. It's about the Americans versus the Europeans. And I think that carries down to everyday broadcasting. It's about the players. It's about the competition. It's about the brand of the PGA Tour or the Masters or the PGA Championship. It's not about the broadcaster. What you're doing is adding to these beautiful pictures we can now show and the story that the players have developed.
MASON: So do you think though that that means that—I'm going to try to answer it for you—you would think you're good because you're not making it about you. You're doing a good job of making it about the competition and what you're seeing and being my eyes when I'm looking through a TV and those kinds of things?
DOTTIE: Right. And I also, I don't like surprises. So I think preparation is what I base a lot of my day-to-day preparation is essential for me. I don't like surprises in broadcasting. I would rather overprepare and get 10% of what I've searched for on the air and know that I have all of this stuff still in a, well, it's basically …
MASON: Giant safety net of anything …
DOTTIE: It's in a Dropbox. I have every note that I've ever taken saved in Dropbox by tournament, since I started at CBS. So there's 10 years' worth of Dropbox on my computer or on my phone. I've worked hard to get that information, and I go back to it. I think not wanting to be surprised, being fully prepared, and not making it about myself just makes for an additive listen.
MASON: I appreciate that. I know you're saying that honestly, but I still think there's something that people like about you, and we'll just have to agree that there could be something else out there. And I'm not just buttering you up because you're sitting right across from me. I think there's something, my theory, if you'll humor me, is that that preparation and intensity is sitting underneath a personality and a candor that I think people find refreshing, just like the delivery of it.
But at all, you can't only be one or the other. I think that's a unique combination to be able to have the preparation and intensity sitting underneath and then a veneer that people like listening to.
DOTTIE: But I think if you're prepared, you can let the lightness of a moment happen.
MASON: That's a good lesson.
DOTTIE: And be engaged with your other commentators. And I think too, one of the people I learned a lot from too early on was Bob Murphy, who had a legendary career at NBC. And I left my headset on. It was early, early on in 2005 when I was just doing USA Thursday Friday.
And I finished at Doral, and I was on my way back in. There still had a couple of holes, a couple of groups out there. So I was just, you know, just listening to the rest of the show. And I heard Murph saying in a break, "She's going to be all right because she talks less than she listens."
MASON: Wow. There you go. The old Lou Holtz: "You have two ears and one mouth. Use it accordingly." I wanted to ask you also, given what you just said about trying to not, you know, make it about you, make it about the competition, what's going on. Do you find it hard because you do have opinions and people like what you have to say? I think. I think that's fair to say that's true. Do you find it hard to have to restrain opinions that you may want to add at times about something going on? Maybe in your head you're thinking, "This guy shouldn't be hitting an 8 iron." Or like where do you draw the line on your opinions versus presenting the information, just-the-facts style?
DOTTIE: I think when you know something's odd, you can deliver it in a different tone that lets people know that there's some genuine doubt, concern there. But I think it's your duty as an analyst, as a reporter, if something looks odd, to say that. And I think we raised a few eyebrows, I think, at Torrey Pines. I guess it was Friday because of the AFC Championship.
But it looked like to me, and Trevor teed it up, and I said, "Yeah, that does look a little odd, a backstopping situation." And it's your duty to call it out. If you've been to as many rules seminars as I have, if you've played as much golf as I have, if you've seen the issues that have developed in the game over the last, certainly over the last six or seven years, that's been a conversation that Geoff Shackelford has taken the lead on. There was no question in my mind that may not have been intentional but looked a little odd. So you have to say it, and you have to say it before the next play. You can't be the guy who just, well, you know …
MASON: "Obviously" … yes, yes.
DOTTIE: Correct. So Frank Chirkinian, legendary CBS producer and director, he did it all, would say, "This is a visual medium. You don't need to tell me what I'm seeing."
MASON: That's funny. But somewhere in there is probably a line, right? I guess there's a duty you feel you have, but at some point, there's something—I guess that's part of the judgment you're using of "Where do I draw a line on what I'm saying here about a situation?"
DOTTIE: Correct. So back to NBC, obviously you're sensing that Tommy Roy was an important person in my development as a broadcaster, and Tommy would say early on that … because he had Johnny Miller who could go rogue every once in a while. He would say, "I want you to say what you're thinking, what you know, but run it through a filter real quick before you say it."
MASON: Interesting.
DOTTIE: Just so you hear it first, and then you repeat it. And I've often thought that was really good advice. So for example, the slow up, the pace of play situation that popped up this year at Torrey. Saturday, again, because of the AFC Championship, Frank Nobilo sends me a text on my iPhone watch, and he said, "I don't want to blindside you, but they teed off at 11:11. It'll be three hours when they get to the 10th tee." And I gave him the thumbs up, and I said, "I've got an opinion, and I've got a new word. Throw it my way." And 11 seconds later, the whole world turned upside down. And it was because the tone was right, the way he teed it up was perfect, and we just had a conversation about how to make things better.
MASON: From where I was sitting, I thought that that was useful, and it did what it, I think, on its best day does, which is spurred more conversation. And what I've loved about it is there is no silver bullet for fixing slow play. And I think people have a misunderstanding about that. And I love hearing now pros saying, "There's a lot to unpack here. How many people are in the field? You know, the conditions?" that you can go on and on and on. And then it also comes to a point where you say, "Is that worth 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 14 minutes, or is it about what you're seeing when you see someone standing over a shot and not pulling the trigger?" And it's kind of brutal as a viewer to be watching that. But anyway, I like that it just opened the conversation because it's an important one for people to understand that there's not, it's not just "play faster." There's a lot that goes into it.
DOTTIE: There are a lot of factors. I think green speeds have become part of the story because when they did slow the greens down at Pebble because of the weather and again at Torrey when we went back for Genesis because of the LA fires, they slowed the greens down, and what happens? People say, "I'll finish." They finished 15 minutes ahead of time Saturday at Pebble just because the greens were slowed down just a little, and the weather was horrendous, but there was no fright factor, and a two-and-a-half footer to just go ahead knock it in. So there are so many factors that are in this that I'm just glad the conversation is …
MASON: Are you glad you said it?
DOTTIE: I'm really glad I said it. Yeah.
MASON: Well, I am, too.
DOTTIE: Thank you.
MASON: So I have one last question. I want to talk a little bit just about the future. Like you know, little crystal ball around golf, but you seem to have a good memory, and I think you have a photographic memory, but you have a good memory.
DOTTIE: Borderline, yes.
MASON: Three cuts missed. Is that accurate? Is that the correct stat? Did you miss three cuts in your career? I think that's the number.
DOTTIE: I think I probably missed more than that, but it wasn't many. I played a lot of weekends. It wasn't many.
MASON: Is it close to three?
DOTTIE: It wasn't many, yeah.
MASON: Do you remember the, I mean, yeah, OK.
DOTTIE: I remember the first one for sure. Hershey, my rookie year.
MASON: I just figured that you remember, we all golfers of any level, recreational, you remember victories, and you also remember painful things. And then because you've had so few missed cuts, what three, four, five, we'll say it somewhere in that neighborhood, you have to remember a few of those.
DOTTIE: I looked at them as motivation and that I just didn't do a very good job. Now, you can get … I remember going to Hawaii and catching the bad side of the cut or the bad side of the wave. There's not much you can do about that, and it was brutal. I mean, there was like a four shot, five shot difference between morning, afternoon.
MASON: Wrong side of the draw, and you're done.
DOTTIE: And I happened to get on that side. I mean, those are the ones you just kind of don't let the paper cuts turn into hemorrhages.
It's like hitting a good putt that doesn't go in: It just didn't go in. But I think a lot of not-good performance, if you look over my career, if you have a breakdown of starts and results, usually poor results were followed by something really good. I took it personally.
MASON: Bounce back. Yeah, you did. You bounced back from it. I just love that. And I wasn't trying to say let's focus on the times you didn't do well with these three cuts. It's just that there's so few. I mean, some of the best, best, best players ever in golf have missed 15, 20 cuts. I think Phil's missed 78, 80. I mean, these are all-time. Anyway. All right. Well, looking forward, have you, I'm sure you have, have you thought about life without golf? And I mean, your whole life. Have you ever stopped and said, "What would have happened if the family hadn't been there, your grandmother wasn't into it?" I mean, maybe you'd be a skier, and you'd see where that would have taken you maybe, but I'm assuming it's hard for you to remember your life at any point that didn't have golf as a part of it.
DOTTIE: Yeah, so that would be 52 years ago that I picked up a golf club. That's pretty significant amount of time.
MASON: That's a lot of time.
DOTTIE: That's a lot of time.
MASON: I wasn't going to do the math.
DOTTIE: I let you do it. We're coming up on one more.
MASON: Stop, stop, we know. A lot of decades in there. Most of us can't remember ages zero through five. Most of your memories probably have a golf club in your hand or around it in your current capacity.
DOTTIE: They either have skis on my feet or golf clubs in my hand. Absolutely.
MASON: Speaking of that, I don't think you play lot of recreational golf anymore.
DOTTIE: No!
MASON: Which hurts my soul. Why is that? You answer that question. Why not so much recreational golf?
DOTTIE: Partly I have not been very healthy. I've had some major foot problems and two major surgeries. That took me out for better part of six, seven years. And I just had a knee replacement in December. So I have not been 100% healthy.
MASON: Got it.
DOTTIE: I've been fighting through a lot of garbage since 2012, really. I want to get back to playing some golf.
MASON: OK. So this isn't a philosophical thing of saying. "I don't … I just … hasn't been, the circumstances haven't been …"
DOTTIE: I still have the wedges that I really love. I still have my putters that I love. I still … so even like rehabbing over the last four months, I finished on the bike, and I finished doing all these stabilizing exercises, and then I stand there and hit putts while your legs are shaking.
MASON: You cannot be taken away from the game.
DOTTIE: You can't. No, no, and all of a sudden, like even this week, I get off the bike, and I've done all the balance things, and I'm like, "Oh, man." My legs are just cranking, and I've got my putter in my hand, and all of sudden like, "Oh my gosh," the feel came back. It was a baby forward press, and then take the shape and move it. It was like, and I hit every one of them solid. It was so cool.
MASON: How great is that? So is that giving you a little bit of the bug of like, "We're going to … we're going to get back?"
DOTTIE: It does! You feel better?
OK, good. That … I'm so glad I asked that. I was nervous that you said, you know, it's not just, it's not fun to me anymore. I understand that it is hard for some people when they've succeeded so much at the professional level. I think it's probably hard to … you have this idea in your head of what you're supposed to be doing, which is being a major champion and shooting these crazy scores. And at some point, you have to maybe play nine holes and have your dog walking with you and enjoy it in a different way.
DOTTIE: I'm not going to tell you it's going to be easy, but I'm going to try.
MASON: I'm sure you remember the movie Forrest Gump, and he ran around the world, and he was doing running, running, running. And he, I think as it went, he just stops, and he says, "I think I'm going home." Are you going to have a moment like that at some point where you just Forrest Gump and say, "I think I'm going home."
DOTTIE: Yeah, I think I will. And I'll know it, my husband will know it, and nobody else will.
MASON: But will it be like that feel, do you think, where it's just that there's going to be a day where you say, " I think this has been good, and I'm good"?
DOTTIE: Yeah, I think there's balance in decisions, and there's a cost to being on the road as much as we are. Even though it's only 20 weeks a year, there are other sacrifices that need to be made in order to do this. And at some point, you know, I was a baseball baby. I've been on the road my entire life.
MASON: It's a lot of hotel rooms. It's a lot of TSA agents. It's a lot of all the things.
Yeah. And you also, but you, you took a break from broadcasting for a couple of years, I think in part because of this very thing. So there's been a moment where you said, "I think I'm, I'm, I'm good." But then you came back, thankfully.
DOTTIE: I did. I was presented with a contract that was just very unclear, and there was going to be way more work than what I knew would be healthy for our relationship at home, for having a dog. All of those things that are like normal life things. I said, "You know what, I don't need to work. I love what I'm doing, but I don't need to work. I think I need, I just need to let things reset" And fortunately, Ted Bishop asked me to be on the PGA of America's board as an independent director. And I loved that time. Was it stressful toward the end when Ted was removed from his position? It was awful. It was awful. I actually abstained because I didn't think it was the right thing. But it gave me a chance to really kind of fall in love with the grassroots of the game again. And it was also the time that CBS was coming back into a contract negotiation with the PGA of America. So it gave, it just like, "Oh, maybe I want to do that."
But ESPN came calling, too. So I had three amazing years at ESPN doing some studio shows, which another set of skills, which I had done some at Golf Channel, but not as much. I was three hours from Bristol. And when something happened at night, I'd get the phone call from Mike McQuade, and I'd be in the car at 3:00 and on the air at 7:00. It was, I loved it. I learned so much from working with him, but we had the front end of the U.S. Opens, the whole USGA package.
I did play-by-play. I was on the golf course. I was in a tower. I did everything possible at ESPN, and I learned so much. And then the landscape changed. ESPN got out. NBC took over the Open Championship because at ESPN we had all three. Women's British Open, we had the Senior Open, and the Open Championship. Loved it. Loved being over there. And the world changed. So I thought, "Well, you know, clearly somebody's got new plans …"
MASON: New plans for you.
DOTTIE: Big guy upstairs got new plans for me. And CBS called, and I really didn't understand that Feherty was leaving. I had no idea. I thought they were looking to add a third walker the way NBC had, the way we had at ESPN. And then it became apparent to me as my phone was blowing up one night with friends at dinner that Feherty was leaving. I was like, "Oh, now I know what they're, now I know … I understand what's happening." But I still wasn't convinced that's where I was meant to be. I just didn't, I didn't know if I wanted to go full bore back into this. So I, fortunate, my circle has some people that are pretty well connected in news and sports and all of that. And I picked up the phone to my former neighbor, Peter Lund, who was head of CBS News, CBS Sports, did it all. And he said, "Kid, if you don't take this job, it's never coming around in your lifetime again." Just …
MASON: There you go.
DOTTIE: Right, I remember I was sitting …
MASON: Good chat …
DOTTIE: … on my front porch, and I said, "Peter, I'm going to go sign the deal."
MASON: "Yes, I'm signing the deal."
DOTTIE: Yes.
MASON: Well, the rest is history. Glad you did that. You mentioned that the time at the PGA of America, and some people cringe a little bit when they hear "grow the game."
DOTTIE: I hate that word. I hate those words together.
MASON: Why is it? Why does that …? I mean, obviously I think we're all interested that golf is open to people and that there's more people playing, all the things I think it's intended to do. But why does that trigger so many people including you?
DOTTIE: Give me reasons to fall in love with the game. Not grow the game. Because if people love the game, the whole thing is going to grow.
MASON: Growth will be an output, not the …
DOTTIE: Correct. Yeah, to me it was little too much lingo. You know, everybody has their initiatives, but that one seemed to stick, and it just makes me cringe.
MASON: Well, we know that that won't be the name of a future pet or on your license plate or anything like that moving forward. All right. Last, last question. When you look into the future and you think about the game of golf, what gives you optimism about the game of golf, in any way you want to answer that question? What excites you about the next 10 to 50 years or some amount of time you'd like to chat about what's positive and …
DOTTIE: What's positive? I think more than any other sport, COVID was positive for golf, and the way it has picked up momentum, it's broadened its reach. It has, the game is bursting at the seams. It is so cool. And professional golf and all the angst there, that's, I think, its own little pod. It's the rest of the game. It's the stewardship of the game. It's amateur golf.
It's kids playing golf. It's families playing golf. It's that what used to be 20% of the golfing population was women and kids. That's now in just five years gone to 28%. The growth of off-golf-course experience. I mean, these are the things that make me feel great about it.
MASON: This is the love that we just talked about. This is where the love will come from.
DOTTIE: This makes me …
MASON: Spending time with people you like, families …
DOTTIE: Absolutely.
MASON: Doing it in ways that may be a little bit different than we're all used to doing traditionally.
DOTTIE: Yep. There's space for all of it.
MASON: There's space for all of it. It's a big tent.
DOTTIE: Yes.
MASON: That is a wonderful place to stop. And thank you so much, Dottie. I appreciate your taking the time. I know you have a lot of things. We just talked about travel and all the commitments. So I appreciate you peeling off a little time for us.
DOTTIE: This was really enjoyable. Thank you.
MASON: Thanks for doing it.
So that's it for us today. Thanks for listening. You can hear more from Dottie when you tune into CBS Golf. Or go to her website, DottiePepper.net. Or check out her book Letters to a Future Champion. I'll have a link to that in the show notes. On the socials, she's Dottie_Pepper on Instagram and on X.
And for all of Schwab's golf content, including our films, tournament news, and promotions, check out SchwabGolf.com. If you've enjoyed the show, which we hope you did, we'd be really grateful if you'd leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, ratings on Spotify, or feedback wherever you listen.
We'll be back with a new episode in two weeks, where I'll be speaking with the person largely responsible for this podcast and our company's commitment to the game, our founder and chairman, Chuck Schwab.
For important disclosures, see the show notes or schwab.com/TheGame
[1] LPGA Tour Qualifying Tournament
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Tournament
[3]PGA Tour University