Before joining ESPN and becoming a SportsCenter host, Scott Van Pelt worked at the Golf Channel. While there he landed an interview with Tiger Woods, who broke down his historic win at the 1997 Masters the following year.
According to Van Pelt, that interview not only helped make his career but his life.
Van Pelt was on the Green Light with Chris Long podcast on Monday to discuss several matters, including the upcoming Masters. The conversation about the 2024 Masters transitioned into Van Pelt’s 1998 interview with Woods. Co-host Macon Gunter asked Van Pelt if, assessing his career, he owed anything to Woods for that interview. Van Pelt quickly replied, “100%.”
After sharing that he got the interview by driving from Orlando to Miami — where Woods was playing and waiting in the locker room — Van Pelt opened up on the interview itself.
“We were supposed to get five minutes and we went for like 45. And he was unbelievable. I got the first crack at that. No one had sat down and talked to him about what he did. We started on Thursday and went all the way to Sunday. He’s incredible in that. Because he’s truly taking you into the mind of this 21-year-old kid that laid waste to every record here. And ESPN didn’t get what I got because I got it first and he was out of gas by the time they were like next up.
“And it put me on the radar. My relationship with Tiger is clearly what ESPN was hiring me for. It wasn’t because — that was it. I had a relationship with Tiger that was different than other people in the media had at the time.”
Van Pelt also shared that he sometimes looks at his life and thinks about what would have happened had that interview not taken place. Imagining what would — or would not — have happened extends beyond his career.
So, every now and then I go down this wormhole — and I’m not even kidding — where I think if he didn’t do what he did in ’97, if I didn’t get that interview with him in ’98, my entire life is different. You know? I met my wife because I work at ESPN. I have the children I have because of these things. You can get to a place where I’m like, I picture myself like penniless and lying on the ground outside of like a jai alai parlor
or something.”
