Kenny Mayne would like to clarify something. He is not banned from Augusta National Golf Club. He is also kind of banned from Augusta National Golf Club. He\u2019s fine with you believing whichever version you prefer.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s funny, that\u2019s a real story and a fake story at the same time, which that\u2019s kind of true with everything, I think,\u201d Mayne told host Brandon Contes on the Awful Announcing Podcast this week, addressing the story that went viral last month<\/a> after he told it to Jon \u201cStugotz\u201d Weiner on God Bless Football and it got picked up by us at Awful Announcing, Sports Illustrated, and Golf Digest as if it were a legitimate controversy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what actually happened, as best as Mayne can reconstruct it. He used to cover golf for ESPN alongside Scott Van Pelt and Andy North, and during one broadcast, he was doing one of his signature silly pretend stories \u2014 the same brand of bit he\u2019d do for NFL coverage \u2014 and made some crack about showing up to the Masters with four \u201csaucy\u201d women to play. Augusta National, which famously exercises extraordinary editorial control<\/a> over everything connected to its tournament \u2014 this is a place that tells broadcasters to say \u201cpatrons\u201d instead of \u201cfans\u201d and \u201csecond nine\u201d instead of \u201cback nine\u201d \u2014 did not find it funny. They called into the ESPN production truck while the broadcast was still on the air.<\/p>\n \u201cThey really did get upset,\u201d Mayne said. \u201cThey really did call ESPN; they called the truck while we\u2019re still on the air. And my boss is like, \u2018No, no, no, he just does jokes. He\u2019s not really gonna do that.’\u201d<\/p>\n The complicating detail is that Mayne was never invited to cover the Masters in the first place. He was primarily covering horse racing at the time, so there\u2019s a real chance Augusta\u2019s angry phone call and his lack of a Masters credential are completely unrelated. Mayne decided it was funnier to tell people he\u2019d been banned for life. That bit sat in his rotation for what he thinks might be 20 years until the Stugotz appearance.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you deliver a line, you gotta kind of know the tone, you gotta know the context,\u201d Mayne said, \u201cand next thing you know, I\u2019m being written up in Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest \u2014 what the hell\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n His bosses at Weenie the Fourth \u2014 the podcast Mayne co-hosts with Brian Baumgartner from The Office and Cooper Manning<\/a> \u2014 were thrilled and told him not to correct it. They didn\u2019t care about the truth. They liked that his name was generating headlines and that people might find the show. Cooper Manning, for his part, has made clear he will not be escorting Mayne onto Augusta\u2019s grounds. He doesn\u2019t want to jeopardize his own standing with the green jackets.<\/p>\n As for what Augusta itself thinks of all this, Mayne figures it was probably just one guy who called that day, and that they may have a better sense of humor than people give them credit for.<\/p>\n The good news is that Darius Rucker has invited Mayne to his golf tournament the day after the Masters. He\u2019s getting close.<\/p>\n Listen to the full episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast featuring Kenny Mayne beginning Thursday, March 5. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, and wherever you get your podcasts. For more content, subscribe to AA\u2019s\u00a0YouTube page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kenny Mayne would like to clarify something. He is not banned from Augusta National Golf Club. He is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[156332,153114,204030,49,48,82501,204031,622,204032,119053,82,204033,204034],"class_list":["post-514955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-augusta-national","tag-awful-announcing-podcast","tag-brian-baumgartner","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cooper-manning","tag-god-bless-football","tag-golf","tag-kenny-mayne","tag-masters","tag-sports","tag-stugotz","tag-weenie-the-fourth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}