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Veteran SportsCenter anchor Matt Barrie has had no shortage of responsibilities since joining ESPN in 2013—from calling college football games to taking the network’s flagship show on the road to the Masters, and plenty in between.
But it’s the work Barrie’s been doing from a 1,500-seat stadium in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., that he calls “the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my career.”
That would be TGL, the indoor team golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, for which Barrie has served as the lead play-by-play voice since its first match one year ago.
“Everyone wants to grow in their career and this opportunity with TGL has allowed me to grow in so many facets,” Barrie told Front Office Sports last month after filming a Monday afternoon edition of SportsCenter at SoFi Center in South Florida. “And I think it’s just important to be able to challenge yourself and do new things, especially something no one’s ever done.”
TGL has six four-man teams, with three players competing in each match, hitting tee shots and approaches into a 64-foot-tall screen that projects virtual holes. Chipping and putting is done on a real-life green complex that rotates in between holes and has 12 different pin locations to choose from.
TGL broadcasts, unlike anything seen at the Masters or on the PGA Tour, have averaged roughly 549,000 viewers on ESPN platforms this season, which is down from the 726,000 viewers the first six TGL matches last season averaged, but up from the season-long average of 498,00 viewers.
Barrie is able to interact directly with the players, who are all mic’d up, and even Tiger Woods, who hasn’t played for his Jupiter Links Golf Club yet this season due to injury but has still been present at his team’s matches.
On the field of play, ESPN’s Marty Smith lightens the mood and provides comic relief through periodic player interviews and sparring back and forth with Woods over his team’s game play strategy.
And new this year, former PGA Tour player Roberto Castro provides a wide range of analysis and perspective that is distinctly unique to TGL.
“I don’t think it makes sense to compare anything that’s happening here to traditional golf,” said Castro, who had quite the journey himself to TGL.
Castro, 40, made $7.4 million in career earnings as a pro golfer. He played his last professional tournament in 2021, and in 2022 joined technology consulting firm CapTech, an early partner of TGL that helped develop the league’s game play. In the early days of the burgeoning league, Castro was one of its first test players.
“He’s hit more balls at TGL than anybody. He’s been there since the beginning and the sound stage in West Palm Beach,” Barrie said.
Castro is valuable in explaining not just how a hole might play or which way a putt might break, but also TGL oddities like “The Hammer” or team strategies related to the triples and singles portion of matches.
Barrie, Castro, and TGL producer Jeff Neubarth meet every week going into the next match to come up with new ideas specifically for the broadcast. The planning has made for a more comfortable feeling in Year 2.
“Matt told me that everyone’s blood pressure is quite a few points lower this year,” Castro said. “Last year was the great unknown.”
ESPN and TGL are exploring an extension of their initial two-year media rights deal that expires after this season, and parent company TMRW Sports is searching for a broadcast partner for its forthcoming WTGL women’s competition.
Barrie signed a contract extension with ESPN in early 2025, and hopes to continue being involved with the network’s golf properties, no matter what rights it has.
Golf was “definitely an added element to my role at ESPN,” Barrie said. “When you sign the [ESPN] contract… the idea is to not be anywhere near your portfolio that you had three years ago when your next deal’s up.”
TGL’s 15-match regular season will conclude March 3, before two rounds of playoff action crown the Season 2 champion later that month.
