Former ESPN anchor reveals ‘saucy’ comment that got him ‘banned for life’ from Augusta National
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To start this all off, I just want to say that I’ve yet to attend a Masters, and I’d really love to at some point, so this is purely a retelling of a Kenny Mayne story from a podcast. Not a flourish to be seen here. And Augusta National, I’ll hopefully see you down the road.
However, if I do make it to that hallowed course on a beautiful April day, there appears to be a zero-percent chance that I’ll run into Kenny Mayne.
The former ESPN-er and SportsCenter anchor revealed that he thinks that he’s been “banned for life from Augusta” after a meh joke went awry. Mayne used to cover golf for the Worldwide Leader and apparently said the wrong thing at the wrong time, upsetting the Augusta National brass.
“I used to cover golf,” Mayne told Jon “Stugotz” Weiner and the gang on the God Bless Football podcast. “I used to do the TPC Sawgrass [the Players Championship], and I did the U.S. Open every year for, I don’t know, seven or eight years. It was me, [Scott] Van Pelt, Andy North, the whole gang. And I would do the silly takeoff story.
“At TPC one year, I just made some smartass comment about, ‘We’ll see you at the Masters, where we bring four saucy ladies out to play!’ Or, you know, just something stupid, right? But mentioning that I’m bringing women to play golf. And [Augusta National] called into the ESPN truck, like we’re still on the air, and the people in Augusta are literally … they somehow have the inside number to the truck. And they were like, ‘He is not coming!’ So I was never invited to go by my lords.”
Mayne added, with a smirk, that it was a “wise decision.” The man’s done everything under the sun when it comes to sports, from teeing off around the world to participating in the renowned "This is SportsCenter" campaign, so he doesn’t seem too beaten up by this ban, at least.
He’s not the only sports journalist to be slapped on the wrist by Augusta National, but hopefully the only one with his name somewhere on this page.
