No bleeping way: Inside the PGA Tour's Profanity Delay room, where curse words go to die

USA Today

10-03-2025

No bleeping way: Inside the PGA Tour's Profanity Delay room, where curse words go to die
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Russell Henley: It's 'surreal' winning 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational
Russell Henley talks about his eagle chip-in and par at the last to win his first signature event on the PGA Tour.
The PGA Tour has a dedicated team that monitors live broadcasts to censor profanity.
The team uses a 15-second delay to bleep out audio and blur video containing expletives.
While some players are known for their occasional outbursts, the team aims to maintain a broadcast suitable for all audiences.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The PGA Tour doesn't have a bleeping profanity problem.
At least not on TV. That's because its brand-spanking new PGA Tour Studios has a Profanity Delay Room and a half-dozen employees who monitor the live broadcast on multiple streams and make sure any expletives blurted in anger get bleeped out.
During the week of the Players Championship, the Tour's flagship event in its own backyard, staff will be giving plenty of tours of the new home of its in-house production unit.
The Tour is redefining how it creates and distributes content at its state-of-the-art multimedia, three-level production facility located adjacent to its headquarters here and replacing the former facility that had been based in St. Augustine at World Golf Village since 1997.
The 165,000-square-foot building broke ground in 2022 and the staff got its feet wet during the fall before officially opening in January. It features all sorts of new bells and whistles and technical resources to deliver a better overall experience for viewers. That includes a bleep room, although Billy Horschel, a player who the employees listen a bit more closely to due to his propensity to get a little hot around the collar and unleash an explicative from time to time, hadn't seen where his bad words go to die during two previous visits to the studio.
'If I had known they had that, I would've been more comfortable dropping some F-bombs,' he said with a smile.
Horschel conceded it's probably a good thing the Tour is looking out for its players when they lose their cool, but he also doesn't have a problem with a player letting loose a curse word from time to time. He said it's a natural reaction and part of life and doesn't think the broadcast needs to be sanitized. He noted he has never been fined for saying a four-letter bad word. But the Tour created a Profanity Delay Room, which is common practice at most TV networks, after microphones picked up Justin Thomas uttering a homophobic slur under his breath during the 2021 Sony Open in Hawaii that cost him several endorsement deals and damaged his image.
During the third round of the WM Phoenix Open in February, Thomas pulled off a remarkable rescue from a waste area. When he was told that his ball had found the green, Thomas turned to his caddie and said, 'Give me my bleeping putter.' Realizing a TV camera was mere feet away from his face, he sheepishly said, 'Sorry, putter," and motioned as if he was zipping his mouth closed.
Fortunately for Thomas, the Tour had his back this time. Anytime a player or fan curses or makes an obscene gesture, they hit a cartoon-sized red button to bleep out the audio or hit a yellow button to black out video on the screen. There's a 15-second latency before the stream reaches viewers. While each stream of the broadcast is different and the players in the field on any given week can impact the amount of cursing, the buttons get pressed on average of a dozen times per day. Four staffers are working at any given time splitting up duties of the main feed, featured group, marquee group and featured hole/betting stream on ESPN+ and PGA Tour Live until each goes off the air. Two relievers rotate in and out to allow for breaks. The new Studios building is a vast upgrade for the Profanity Delay team, whose former digs had been based in cramped quarters inside a trailer.
Jon Rahm and Tyrell Hatton used to be the most flagrant bleepers before they left for LIV Golf. The staffers didn't have loose lips about who they have to bleep out the most, but a Golfweek survey of caddies suggests Thomas, Brian Harman and Shane Lowry are in the conversation along with Horschel. Matt Kuchar is famously an 'oh, shoot guy,' but one time Tyler Pinnel, who has been part of the Bleep team full-time since the 2024 Cognizant Classic last March, said he once caught Kuchar dropping an expletive.
'It was like hearing my Grandmother curse,' he said.
Rickie Fowler has been known to keep the crew on high alert but usually not for anything he says. His fans love to chant a nickname referencing male genitalia that he credits the rowdy WM Phoenix Open fans with coining.
'There are worse nicknames I guess, but it's become a thing,' Fowler said.
If anyone does get away with cursing on air, it might be international players doing so in their native tongue. Take Belgium's Thomas Detry, who speaks four different languages – Dutch, French, Spanish and English – who tells Golfweek he'll air his frustrations in French 'because nobody understands it out here.' The Bleep Room, for instance, suspects Argentina's Alejandro Tosti curses in Portuguese but concede he could be saying God Bless America. Not much else gets past the profanity zone, where a sign on the door cautions bleeping is in process.
'It's the coolest job in the world,' said Pinnel. 'I get to watch golf all day.'