Azinger turned professional in 1981. During his early years, Azinger collected meager earnings. He and his wife, Toni, bought a used motor home, a 1983 Vogue, and drove from tournament to tournament. Azinger had a breakout year in 1987, when he won three times on the PGA Tour and had a second-place finish in the
Open Championship. and said that he was "heartbroken" to leave Muirfield without the
Claret Jug trophy. At the
1991 Ryder Cup, Azinger was involved in a controversial episode with
Seve Ballesteros, with whom he had a
fierce rivalry. Azinger and American teammate
Chip Beck were using balls of different compressions off the tee on multiple holes, in violation of an agreement between the Cup captains. Azinger initially denied that the Americans had engaged in this practice, but admitted to it once he realized that there would be no penalty assessed. In December 1993, Azinger was diagnosed with
non-Hodgkin lymphoma in his right shoulder. His treatment included six months of
chemotherapy and five weeks of radiation in
California. He wrote a book called
Zinger about his battle with the disease He led the team to its first victory over the European squad since 1999. The team's victory was largely credited to his innovative strategy. This strategy is outlined in his book,
Cracking the Code: The Winning Ryder Cup Strategy: Make it Work for You, which was released in May 2010. The book was co-authored with Ron Braund, a corporate team builder and psychologist, who consulted Azinger throughout the Ryder Cup. Azinger made his
Champions Tour debut at
The ACE Group Classic in February 2010. He played four events that year and none since.
Broadcasting career Azinger first worked in television in 1995 while recovering from chemotherapy. Azinger was recruited by lead NBC analyst
Johnny Miller to join the broadcast team as an on-course reporter, a stint which included reporting on the singles match at the
1995 Ryder Cup between
Tom Lehman and Azinger's former Ryder Cup rival
Seve Ballesteros, who was playing in his final Ryder Cup. After returning to the PGA Tour for several more successful playing years, Azinger returned to broadcasting on a full-time basis. From 2005 to 2015, Azinger worked as lead analyst for
ESPN and
ABC Sports' golf coverage. He initially shared analyst duties with his former Ryder Cup and Open Championship rival
Nick Faldo. Azinger and Faldo, along with host
Mike Tirico, formed a broadcast team that was met with positive critical acclaim. Faldo left for rival
CBS after the 2006 season; since then, Azinger worked alone with Tirico. However, when Faldo and Azinger were opposing captains at the
2008 Ryder Cup, Azinger's colleague
Andy North filled in for him. Faldo and Azinger have also reunited as analysts on two occasions. The first reunion was at the
2007 Open Championship (for ABC) and the second was at the
2009 Presidents Cup (for the Golf Channel). After ESPN/ABC lost its rights to both the U.S. Open and Open Championship to Fox and NBC, Azinger joined
Fox Sports as its head golf analyst in 2016, replacing
Greg Norman. In October 2018,
NBC Sports and
Golf Channel named Azinger their lead golf analyst, succeeding the retiring Johnny Miller – who had originally helped give Azinger his start in broadcasting during his recovery from cancer in 1995. After Miller ended his NBC career at the 2019
Phoenix Open, Azinger became NBC’s lead analyst during the Southern Swing in March 2019. He remained with Fox for the U.S. Open, U.S Women's Open, and U.S. Amateur for the 2019 season alongside his NBC duties, until those championships returned to NBC, where Azinger had also ended up at, in 2020. ==Personal life==