Kostis Carries On

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA | Blame it on the blonde.

She’s the reason CBS Sports golf announcer Peter Kostis straps what looks like a microwave oven to his chest every weekend telecast and trudges up the hills and through the heat, documenting a golf tournament from ground level, sharing with the audience what he sees as one of the game’s most respected teachers.

Kostis proves that television work isn’t always glamorous. Jim Nantz and Sir Nick Faldo sit with their neckties and blue blazers in an air-conditioned perch above the 18th green wherever they might be that week while Kostis is doing what amounts to road work, lugging that contraption around the course so he can get a look at the swings he’s asked to critique on a moment’s notice.

Blame her, whoever she was.

Sitting in the catering tent in the television compound at the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow, ceiling fans stirring the warm muggy air around the buffet line, Kostis is a short par-4 away from where it happened.

“We’re in the old first fairway here...