After year-long hiatus, Paul Azinger returning to broadcast booth in 2025

After a year’s hiatus, Paul Azinger is returning to the broadcast booth in 2025.

Azinger will work as lead analyst for 10-12 PGA TOUR Champions events next season, replacing Lanny Wadkins, who announced his retirement last Friday. Azinger, 64, spent nearly two decades as a regular presence in golf broadcasting before separating from NBC Sports in fall 2023.

The news was first reported by Golfweek’s Adam Schupak.

“It’s not like a full-time gig or anything, which I don’t want, but to be able to go in there and part-time some golf, some really great golf, it’ll be kind of fun,” Azinger told Golfweek. “I’ll just be as candid as I can and enjoy it.”

Azinger won 12 times on the PGA TOUR, including the 1993 PGA Championship at Inverness, but made just four PGA TOUR Champions appearances upon turning 50, focusing on broadcast work rather than continuing his playing career. The Massachusetts native first worked in broadcasting in 1995, as an on-course reporter for NBC, while recovering from chemotherapy (he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in his right shoulder in December 1993). From 2005 to 2015, he worked as lead analyst for ESPN and ABC Sports’ golf coverage, a role he then assumed at FOX Sports before moving into his NBC role.

Azinger, who captained the winning U.S. Team at the 2008 Ryder Cup, will now commentate on several of his contemporaries from an extensive PGA TOUR playing career; he made 587 career starts on TOUR. He now resides outside Sarasota, Florida, and appeared at the Korn Ferry Tour’s LECOM Suncoast Classic earlier this year, playing in the pro-am.

The 2025 PGA TOUR Champions schedule will include 28 total events; Azinger will be spelled by Peter Jacobsen and John Cook during his off-weeks.