A well-respected commentator was once banned from after causing a stir with a throwaway comment during a live broadcast. Jack Whitaker covered a variety of sports during his career including horse racing, , boxing and baseball. Golf was only a small part of his resume but was arguably the most memorable.

Whitaker regularly covered the , the Players Championship and while employed by CBS. He also worked at the Masters but was blacklisted from Augusta National after making an innocuous on-air comment which proved controversial. The man from Pennsylvania said the offending word during coverage of his first Masters in 1966.

On the final day of the tournament, Whitaker referred to the large crowd approaching the 18th hole as a 'mob'. The following year, he was informed by CBS that he would not be covering the Masters again due to his use of the term.

The broadcaster cited the fact he had described the crowd as a mob, while also failing to inform viewers of the green jacket ceremony on the putting green at the conclusion of play.

Whitaker always believed that CBS were not responsible for making that call. He was convinced that Augusta co-founder Clifford Roberts was unhappy with his use of the word 'mob' and banned him from the grounds.

"It looked like a mob of people scurrying toward the green, but Mr Roberts took offence," he told the Associated Press in 1979. "He said the gallery at the Masters was not a mob, and that was that."

Whittaker did not return to Augusta for another six years, when he was invited by CBS to attend the Masters as a spectator. He was asked to take over as telecaster when Henry Longhurst became ill and continued in the role in the following years.

while providing live coverage of the Masters. Spectators should be referred to as 'patrons' and not 'fans', while the common phrase 'back nine' is also frowned upon.

American analyst Brandel Chamblee told : "'Fan' is a big one. In their eyes, it's short for fanatical and they don't want to refer to the people out there as being fanatical. That's why you hear people say 'patrons'.

"If you said 'back nine' on the air, you would get reprimanded because it's the 'second nine'. You don't want somebody to say: 'He's playing the backside really well', because 'back nine' is close to 'backside' and 'backside' is far too colloquial."

Other common terms that are rarely heard at the Masters include 'rough' and 'sand trap'. Golfers who miss the fairway are said to end up in the 'second cut', while those who find the sand have landed in a 'bunker'.