SCOTTSDALE – David Feherty has always been more stand-up comedian than golf-swing analyst as a television golf commentator. So doing a routine in front of a live audience seems like a job he was born to do.
On Wednesday night, the NBC Sports and Golf Channel analyst takes his act to the Orpheum Theater in downtown Phoenix, where more than 1,100 golf fans will likely be left in stitches from his one-of-a-kind brand of humor.
“It’s kind of daunting, but it’s a real buzz once you get out there and stop (crapping) yourself, which hopefully that happens in the first few minutes,” Feherty said.
The 61-year-old tour-pro-turned-TV-personality began moonlighting from his TV gig in 2017 and quickly discovered during his first show that he had no concept of time once he started his act.
“It went for three hours and 12 minutes. There were people dying in the audience, you know,” he said. “I think we had two natural deaths and I think one guy pissed himself to death because his bladder was too full. And from there we just, we do them in sort of clumps of three, preferably around golf tournaments.”
His Phoenix show takes on added meaning as Feherty will reunite with his former CBS Sports cohort Gary McCord, who learned late last year that his contract wouldn’t be renewed. Until Feherty jumped ship for NBC and Golf Channel, he and McCord were golf’s Laurel and Hardy, its Frick and Frack, its Cheech and Chong. When asked if tonight’s reunion would be a one-off or the launch of a two-man show, Feherty said, “We’re going to do it and see how it goes and it’s something that I would like to do more often.
“I miss him. I miss him a lot. Especially with the way things have kind of broken for him. It gives me more of an opportunity to spend time with him, I think. It’s something that I would really enjoy. I’m saying that I am nervous tonight; it’s like being handcuffed to a primate that you’re not quite sure how he’s going to he react. A Capuchin monkey or something, he might bite me.”
The other part of his day job on TV consists of hosting “Feherty,” the popular Golf Channel show where he’s interviewed more than 140 golfers and celebrities. But Feherty’s white whale continues to be Tiger Woods, a player for whom Feherty had a front-row seat to watch the majority of his incredible exploits. He has yet to get Woods to agree to do the lengthy sit-down interview.
“I would love Tiger to be my last show,” Feherty said. “He’s getting to a place where I think he can – I can do the show properly. I want the show to be a service to him and the journalistic integrity is under question there, but I have guests, I don’t have victims. That’s for Piers Morgan or for someone else. And he’s done so much for all of us, hell, I might not have a job if it weren’t for him.
“I’m interested in him being vulnerable and just telling us how he’s felt the last 20-odd years and I don’t think that he’s been in a place where he would be comfortable doing that until it looks like he’s heading in that direction to me. I would love to have him on, but to have the kind of interview that I think would be of a service to him and me and Golf Channel, obviously, I think his stock would go up astronomically if he were to do the show and it were to work out like that.”
