Having dialed down his TV career, Paul Azinger is tuning into course architecture at a new community right around the corner from where he grew up
In his book Generation of Swine, Hunter S. Thompson wrote of television: “The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”
Paul Azinger is too kind to go that far. His parents taught him to make his words soft and sweet in case he had to eat them, so Zinger will either say good things about the people he worked with in his almost-two-decade television career, or he won’t say anything at all. “Dan Hicks is such a pro,” Azinger says of the guy who sat next to him in the NBC booth for years. “He made me better.” And of his former ABC partner, Azinger says, “Mike Tirico is a genius.”
He won’t go into detail about his unceremonious separation as the lead golf analyst for NBC that came near the end of 2023, even though the details are simple. New leadership made an offer to renew Zinger’s contract. The offer wasn’t very good. Azinger’s agent countered. That’s the way negotiations work. But Sam Flood, the president of NBC Sports, said thanks but no thanks, we’ll go in a different direction. Zinger’s last broadcast was the Ryder Cup in Rome.
A year later, the door Flood closed allowed Zinger to open a floodgate into a life the 12-time PGA Tour winner and major champion had never fully experienced, one that includes never missing his grandson’s baseball games or golf tournaments. “He’s a good little athlete,” Zinger says of daughter Sarah Jean Collins’s son. “But he was in tears the other day after having a bad day on the golf course. That’s what the game will do to you. No matter your age, it’ll bring you tears.”
There’s also the boat. Most mornings he can be found on the water wearing water-resistant khakis and a silver hoodie. There’s a honey hole in a lagoon between Anna Maria Island off the west coast of Florida and the mainland that locals call “the bijou,” where fishermen like Zinger catch their limit of snook and redfish before breakfast.
After piloting the dual-outboard pontoon boat back to his dock, Zinger jumps in his old Porsche Carrera turbo and heads into town. He’s sold all the Harley-Davidsons and other toys that might get a 65-year-old killed, including the GT40 that had 1,000 horsepower and would go 100 mph in second gear and a 5.0 Mustang convertible with aftermarket diffusers, boot cover, and downforce spoiler. His current ride is his third throwback Porsche, which he traded two 911s to get. He drives it to the Azinger Family Compassion Center, a 10,000-square-foot facility he and wife Toni built as part of One More Child and Guardian Angels of Southwest Florida. Toni is a human-trafficking advocate, working with the state’s Attorney General to stem the tide of trafficked women and children through the state. So far, the Compassion Center has served more than 12,000 women and children.
From there, he heads inland to his latest venture, Miakka Golf Club, where Zinger is on the design team with course architects Jason Straka and Dana Fry. It is likely to be the grandest Florida development in more than a decade.
In late 2024, Azinger signed a one-year deal to replace Lanny Wadkins as the lead analyst for the PGA Tour Champions, a television product he hopes to shake up with some innovative ideas. But that gig—one event every three weeks from a studio in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., instead of on the road—won’t cut into his fishing, charity work, or new passion for course design.
Miakka owner Steve Herrig, an entrepreneur and CEO of Sunz Holdings, isn’t a golfer, but he is a father. When his daughter Hannah asked for a horse, Herrig bought 100 acres in Manatee County and built one of the most elaborate equestrian facilities in the world. Once that project was done, he bought more land for steeplechase. One thing led to another, and before it was over Herrig had almost 5,000 acres master-planned with 120 10-acre ranch homesites and 1,100 acres devoted to golf. There will be one 18-hole course, a 12-hole par-3 course, 10 member cabins (four- and eight-bedroom floorplans), a 2.5-acre lighted putting green, a 365-degree driving range, a short-game area, a 38-acre lake, and a performance center with a putting lab and indoor/outdoor hitting bays. Nelly Korda inquired about membership before the groundbreaking. And conversations have begun for the course, which measures 7,700 yards and features both Stadium and Lazer Zoysia, to host a professional event.
“This is one of the great opportunities to return to the area of my youth and build a spectacular golf course that will probably be a big part of my legacy,” Azinger says. “Thankfully, I was invited to do it. The reason I’m doing it is because Steve Herrig, who is an old family friend, asked me. Nobody else had asked me to be involved in design, and this area is so special to me. I grew up in those woods and on that river, so this is perfect.
“I grew up 15 minutes from the entrance to Myakka State Park. We were there all the time. That river is so diverse. It’s full of saltwater tarpon and snook and then it has freshwater bass and bluegill. It’s so unique in how far inland tarpon will be swimming into that river. You realize how great Florida is. You can catch saltwater fish from a riverbank up in the middle of the state.”
Nobody knows more about fishing than Azinger. But he understood that his friends knew more about design. So, his first calls were to Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite. Both offered sage advice about drainage and playability. But Zinger also had some ideas. Unlike a lot of modern architects who are creating treeless moonscapes, Zinger loves trees. He was heartbroken when Inverness, where he won the 1993 PGA Championship, went through a renovation that removed thousands of hardwoods and native pines.
“You can’t believe how many trees we’re adding to this site,” he says of Miakka Golf Club. “It was originally supposed to be about 330 plantings. Now, we’re probably going to move or add 1,000 trees. And we’re moving some live oaks that are epic.”
Both of Paul and Toni’s daughters and sons-in-law live close and his grandchildren spend a lot of time at their home on Palma Sola Bay in Bradenton, where he knows and loves every tree. He’s the kind of naturalist you enjoy being around, because none of it is pompous or preachy. You learn about your surroundings through his passion.
Paul taught the grandkids to fish from the boat dock, just as his father, Ralph, a retired lieutenant colonel, did for him in Sarasota. Ralph ran a marina where Paul and his brothers washed boats and pumped gas. Paul’s mom was the serious golfer. When the boys were in high school, she arranged for her son to caddie at the LPGA event at Bent Tree, their neighborhood club. Paul drew Mickey Wright.
“I learned so much from her,” he says. “She only missed one tee shot. She hooked it in the left rough. When we got to the ball, she said, ‘The shot that gets you into trouble is usually the one that’ll get you out.’ So, she takes out a 7-iron and hits another hook around a tree and right onto the green. She two-putted for a par like it was nothing. I remembered that my entire career.”
That career took off later than most. Azinger wasn’t one of the can’t-miss kids coming out of high school. He walked on the golf team at Brevard Community College and took a summer job at Bay Hill in Orlando so he could practice. Even after earning a scholarship at Florida State, he never thought much about a career in golf until 1980 when, at age 20, he won the Sarasota City Championship at Bobby Jones Golf Course, a Donald Ross-designed muni. That week Zinger’s father told him, “You’ve got the sound. It sounds different when you hit it.”
He married his college sweetheart, Toni, the daughter of a judge from Blackshear, Ga., a tiny railroad town on the Okefenokee swamp. The newlyweds bought a used Vogue motorhome and, with no permanent address and so little money they lived off bologna sandwiches and $1 canned soup, they lit out on the mini-tour circuit where Paul earned a reputation as a short-game wizard.
It took a long time to win, but in January of 1987 he broke through with a one-shot victory over Hal Sutton at the Phoenix Open. His winning scores were 67–69–66–67, which was remarkable when you consider that seven years before he’d never broken 70 two rounds in a row in his life.
That victory in Phoenix propelled Azinger to three total wins in 1987, and a runner-up at the Open Championship, an event he should have won but let slip away late.
The rest of his career reads like something that should at least put him in the Hall of Fame conversation—wins every year from 1987 to 1993, including the 1992 Tour Championship and that PGA Championship. And he was on three Ryder Cup teams. Cancer and comeback stories have been well chronicled, and if you need a good cry, go watch the eulogy he gave at Payne Stewart’s memorial service.
His Ryder Cup captaincy has also been covered extensively (full disclosure: this author co-wrote Azinger’s book, Cracking the Code, on the successful team-building plan that catapulted the U.S. to victory in 2008). But what most have forgotten is that the Zinger-Nick Faldo captaincies that year were kind of a PR stunt. They’d shared the broadcast booth together at ABC where they sometimes bumped heads. As players, their interactions had been barely cordial. So, having them head opposing teams in Louisville was a way to keep the hype going for two full years. No one expected Azinger to revolutionize the event with a management system he learned from the Navy SEALs.
College freshmen today were born the year of Azinger’s Ryder Cup at Valhalla, but people still thank him at airports. He also still speaks at corporate leadership summits about the system he created—another part of life he’s enjoying now that there’s a limited television schedule to work around.
Get him out at Miakka on a Gator, which he drives with the same ferocity he used to apply to his Yamaha dirt bikes, and you see the passion. “You have to appeal to every level of player,” Zinger says of a good golf course. “You must design for the best player and for the worst player. Augusta National can be played by any level of player. So, it’s a balance. You want to make it a challenge, but you can’t make it so hard that nobody wants to play.”
From the clubhouse site, a manufactured hilltop with a view of the entire property, Zinger turned to the river where the snook and tarpon of his youth flourished in brackish water. “This place is going to be unbelievable,” he says. “I can’t believe I get to come out here all the time now.”
He paused as if his entire career had suddenly flashed before his eyes. Then, staring down toward the water, he repeated: “All. The. Time.”
Great piece Steve. Really pulled together all of Paul’s disparate history. In the end he’s just a good old boy from Sarasota County where we’re proud of him.
Zinger is a class guy, 1st class.
Always loved Paul’s game, grit and graciousness!