John Derr, who reported from the Masters golf tournament 62 times and was part of the CBS team when the event was televised for the first time, in 1956, died on Saturday at his home in Pinehurst, N.C. He was 97.
His daughter, Cricket Gentry, said he apparently died of a heart attack while watching the Belmont Stakes on television. She went to his house after the race, in which American Pharoah captured the Triple Crown, and found him in his chair in front of the TV.
“It was like he had stood up and said, ‘Hooray!