Tech enhancements, hot mics, player input – TGL producer goes deep on Season 1
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Hello and welcome to this edition of the Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lab. We have a very fun episode today. We'll have an extended conversation with Jeff Newbarth, the producer for TGL, that you are not going to want to miss. But first, Rex, you are in South Florida, been reporting the last couple of days out at the Cognizant Classic. What's in your notebook?

A lot came out of the notebook. The policy board met on Monday at PGA National. There was a lot covered in that meeting from what I was told. Not a lot about that White House meeting last week, which I think is a little telling, to be honest with you. And as we get

some distance maybe between what happened last week in the White House between the tour and the governor of the public investment fund. I don't think it's painting a very rosy picture, to be honest with you. And look, these are clearly still ongoing negotiations. After almost four hours in the Oval Office, not to come up with some sort of

I don't even want to say deal, just not to feel like you're at least a step closer to a potential deal, at least in principle. I think that's an indication that things probably didn't go as well inside that Oval Office as we would have liked. And maybe it's an indication of how far apart the sides still are. I was curious when I was reporting on Monday's policy board meeting. It seems to me most of it was dedicated and we sort of touched on the idea of potential changes.

to the tour championship format. And I think we're a lot further down the road than some thought. As a matter of fact, I had one player tell me that those changes could probably be implemented this year, that you're probably not going to get pushback from players. Normally, a change like that you don't want to do in the middle of a season or even a third of the way into a season. But if the tour moves in the direction that I think most players are thinking, that is going to be some sort of combination of changes

three, maybe four days of traditional stroke play. And then the field gets cut. And then you have some sort of mass play metal mass play on Sunday to come up with the big winner. If you come up with a formula that I think most players can adhere to, it was fascinating. I did. I actually talked with Brant Snedeker who's on the pack. He's won the tour championship. And even he, in the interview I did with him for golf central on Tuesday was pretty straightforward that no, the current system doesn't work. You know, starting strokes is just too confusing. It, it,

When you look how it's not as confusing as Steve Sands with whiteboards and that was confusing to like that way, we can keep stepping backwards. And it seems to me the tour is still trying to find a way to create the right formula. And I think you're actually the one that probably touched on this. There is a season long race. It's the Comcast top 10.

And if we could just come to the conclusion that maybe we just make the season long race what stands alone. Like, OK, here's your reward, Scotty Scheffler, for having an unbelievable historic season. And here's the big check and congratulations. And oh, now we're going to play the playoffs. And even though you've had a great season, you're kind of starting from scratch with everyone else. I think if we can get there, that's probably a step in the right direction. Yeah, I'm going to keep stumping for this on each and every podcast until it's implemented, even if it takes until 2035.

That won't get boring or repetitive at all. Exactly. But call the winner of the FedEx Cup after the regular season, whether that's the Wyndham Championship, maybe you incorporate the FedEx St. Jude Championship as the final regular season event, whatever the case is, call that the FedEx Cup champion and then have this awesome playoff bonanza among the top 70, among the top 50, among the top 30, however you want to do it with a big money payout. Then you can do fun in different formats instead of trying to shoehorn two different things

into this, which is a season-long champion as well as then having a fun and a compelling finale. It is going to be interesting, though, Rex, when it does come up with the Tour Championship format. Scottie Scheffler is a member of the Player Advisory Council, so he will have been briefed on sort of what they're thinking about in terms of these format changes. He was very much against

the starting strokes for him that it wasn't yeah he wasn't a fan of it won the FedEx Cup anyway getting Scottie's buy-in is the most dominant player on the PGA Tour I think will go a long way I'm look we've we've criticized the format in the past we can't criticize the PGA Tour now for trying something different I'm for it I'm still not convinced that it's going to produce the intended goal which is which is two things in one I'd like to see it split but hey

I'm going to see exactly what happens. Sausage fingers up. Please go ahead.

Well, and I'm always quick to jump to the tour's defense on some level. No, I'm with Scotty. I don't know that starting strokes is the magical formula either. Let's keep looking like, okay, let's don't give up the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over again. But I think you have to give the tour their flowers that they have still created something essentially in football season. Now it's the very, very, it's week zero of football season, but still everyone's attention is, is on football where the top players,

are vested in showing up at Eastlake, and they're vested in trying to win the season-long trophy, which has been created into something that's important to them, and everyone's paying attention, at least within the world of golf. I think that is something that we shouldn't gloss over. The other half of this is, and we touched on this earlier,

On Tuesday when we did golf today and this was aiming being aiming Lynch at his best was OK, if they're if we're not that close to a deal with the public investment fund, we're starting to get short of time. Like, let's say there is some sort of deal reached in principle.

When are you going to announce it? Well, you're not going to do it next week during the Arnold Palmer Invitational signature event. You wouldn't want to do it during the Players' Championship, the flagship event. And at that point, you only have three weeks, three tournaments essentially, between the Players' Championship and the Masters, the year's first major. So the idea of trying to get something done in the first quarter, and I think both of us have reported that that has been the mission all along. It's getting early late, and you're starting to wonder if this is even going to get done this year or not.

Yeah, it's just crazy to think about considering the tone. I mean, you were in the room with Jay Monahan and the Scrum with reporters at Torrey Pines, the optimism that certainly he was exuding Tiger Woods as well when he was in the CBS booth. It seems it seemed like at least from afar, they're on the one yard line. All of a sudden they got a legal formation penalty. There was a sack.

Now there's a holding call and all of a sudden you've bumped yourself out of field goal range. And so we're going to see how that progresses. Obviously, you guys are the drill NBC sports dot com slash golf. Stay tuned to that. And to your point, too, on the Rex is about the point of the PGA Tour sort of making these changes like we've criticized them in the past for being slow to move.

and probably being a little bit too reactionary. This is pretty quick in terms of tour, by tour standards, of how they would be implementing these changes. When I talked to the tour officials at Pebble Beach just about a month ago, at this point, they said, look, if we can get alignment from partners, from sponsors, from players, from the broadcast team, we're going to implement this internationally.

In 2025. And so that's crazy to think about. Kudos to the PG tour for even trying to make this for 2025 and sort of advancing the product as quick as they can. One other storyline wrecks this week at the Cognizant Classic, at least inside the ropes.

is Jordan Spieth. First time he's teed it up at PGA National as a pro. In his press conference on Tuesday, he talked about how encouraging it was that he's even able to play this week, coming off a three-event-in-a-row stretch along the West Coast swing. What did you take away from your time with Jordan in terms of where he is with his health, with his wrist, and sort of his playing schedule over the next couple of weeks?

You and I both appreciate Jordan for the honesty. He is shot full of sodium pentothal. And every time I talk to him, it seems like I hear something new about this wrist injury that shocks me even more. This one being that there was a point last season where if the tendon slipped out of place, which I can only imagine how painful, how uncomfortable that could possibly be. If he held his wrist a certain way, and I'm clearly not doing it correctly, but if he held it a certain way...

And wait for it. It's a very technical thing, so you need to stay with me. Ready? Shook it. That would fix it. It would pop everything back into place, and he was fine. So if it popped out of place, he was clear. I couldn't do this with my wrist. It hurt. And if I did this, shook it magically. It's like kicking something that you want to work, like the jukebox, to put it into old man terms.

If I shook it, then it was fine. I could start swinging drivers then. That to me is shocking. Do you think that's what Dr. James Andrews was doing all these years with Tommy John surgery? I know you're having some elbow pain. Just shake it out a little bit. Pay attention. Hold it here. Shake it. That's right.

It's fine. That to me is shocking. I think it's encouraging that he's in the field this week. It is fun. He hasn't played here. He hasn't played PGA national since 2009. He was a junior played in the polo there. So it's not, it wasn't a tour event that he normally came to. You talked a little bit about this. It just didn't fit into his schedule. And there's,

There's a lot of players that that tournament doesn't fit into their schedules. But after talking with him at the Genesis Invitational, after missing the cut, and keep in mind, that's a 72-man field. You had to play really bad to miss that cut. He clearly didn't have his best stuff. And it was clear after three straight weeks of demanding golf, to be quite frank, the wrist was hurting him, that he needed –

He needed to rest it. He needed to have therapy. He needed to give it a chance to sort of get better to try again because this is how the process is going to work. The fact he's back just a week later is very encouraging. I'm going to – I don't even know if I want to call this news, but everyone needs to pay very, very close attention to this. And we sort of touched on this.

He, Jordan, was given sponsor exemptions into Pebble Beach. He has a close relationship with AT&T. It's a signature event. He's not qualified for the signature events. He was also given an invitation into the Genesis Invitational.

We have talked about this only because as a member of the policy board, it seems to me all of those invitations are going to someone who is either on the policy board or on the PAC. And there has been some pushback on it. It's worth keeping an eye on on 5 p.m. on Friday that by all indications, Jordan Spieth right now does not have an invitation into the Arnold Palmer interview.

which is again, an event that you would think the tour would want him there. He can still qualify. There's still some other ways for him to get in. Certainly playing well at the Honda classic, uh, Cognizant classic. That's going to be fine. That's a fine. That's on me. I'm sorry. Um, certainly playing well, but that's worth keeping an eye on because that is a huge pivot by the folks at Arnold Palmer. No, I mean, we, we talked about it, uh,

On the Sunday show, like this is this is a player and this is a situation that came under the microscope last year. Remember how many exemptions Webb Simpson got? Remember how many exemptions Adam Scott got? Now, I don't think anyone would argue that that Jordan Spieth is not in a different category.

than those players in terms of popularity. He's already had an opportunity to win a PGA tour event. Like he would be a deserving sponsor exemption. Now he has fallen off the board. He made it. He made a point to mention that he's no longer on either board. That spot now belongs to Camillo Vigegas. He's still among the most popular players on the PGA tour ranked a fifth player impact program. However,

You start to give him three, four, five spots, thus then sort of insulating him from making potential starts down the summer and keeping him inside the top 70, top 50, top 30, whatever it's going to end up being. That is going to come under some sort of criticism. I think it lends credence to the belief that, hey, don't even have sponsor exemptions for signature events. These spots should be earned, not necessarily given.

And when I if I throw these names at you, which I've been hearing will get sponsor exemptions into the Arnold Palmer invitation to your point, Mackenzie Hughes, let's say, Rafael Campos, Justin Rose, any combination of those players getting in, you could be like, all right, I get it. I'm fine with that. But I did have a long conversation with another player who pointed out, why would you not want Jordan in your field?

Like of all the players out here on the NBA tour. He can win the golf tournament. Let's be very clear. Like he almost won Bay Hill a couple years ago. This is not charity. He played really well. Like that three-event swing that we just talked about that he went through coming back from the surgery, there were some ups and some downs. Didn't play great at Pebbles. Certainly didn't play great at Torrey Pines. Played really well at Scottsdale. Finished tight for fourth. And so to your point, you're right. He's still very competitive, and he's working his way back in that direction. And as a needle mover, I don't think there's anyone bigger in the game right now

other than Tiger Woods than Jordan Spieth. Yeah, and maybe it is just for appearances. Maybe he was going to get a tournament sponsor exemption all along. I guess we'll wait about 48 hours to find out if that was going to be the case. He can still play his way in based on how he plays at the Cognizant Classic through the Aon Swing 5. That's why a player like Aldrich Potgeeter, who lost in the playoff last week in Mexico, is going to be teeing up the Arnold Palme Invitational because of his play, previous events, Jordan Spieth,

If he does play well at PGA National, can do that as well. Regardless, it should be a fun week, sort of a pretty grueling four-week stretch on tough courses on the PGA Tour. Really puts the players through their paces, through the Players' Championship, looking ahead to the Masters. Rex, one other thing you did this week besides reporting at the Cognizant Classic, would head back to the SoFi Center in TGL. I believe this was the first time you've been there

since the debut match that you and I did and did a couple podcasts related to. What were your impressions this time around?

I'm very impressed. Oh, there we are. That is Alex Russell for everyone who doesn't know. Little Russ, we call her on this podcast. That is Little Russ. She was there with – that is also one of our cameramen. That's Steve Durstein who was there. He's actually a Navy viewer in Nocatee, so you're really close with Steven as well. And then two randos who I hope they don't sue us for putting this on this podcast. Yes, for throwing those in there. I apologize. Without blurring their faces.

She had much better seats than I did. I was there in the media section, which was not great seats. And we can take that up with our guests who's coming on the show later, who works for TGL. I was taken and look, we talked a lot about this in person. It's a really cool experience. And now that I had a chance to go back and to sort of double down and kind of kind of enjoy it after seeing it for the first time. If you if you're in South Florida over the next few weeks and you have the opportunity, I would highly recommend.

going with a group of friends. It is a fun scene. It's loud. It moves along really, really quickly. There's beverages. There's food. There's a lot of reasons you would want to show up and do this live. Now, as a TV product, and again, we're about to have Jeff Newbarth on who's going to speak to this much better. I've also taken how much better the TV product has gotten. I'm also...

shocked how much better the actual golf has gotten. It is amazing. And I think at the end of the season, it will be fun to sort of break this down among the players. How much the quality of golf now versus in those first matches is so much better. You're seeing holdouts. You're seeing long putts made. You're seeing so much better shots and it,

and I was reading a golf digest story about maybe players figuring out the cheat code. My takeaway with that is it took them a while to figure this out. This was not just a perfect skill set that you pick up from the golf course and you take to this indoor simulation that they've created. Like it's taken a while for players and you can tell the ones,

who have really focused in. Like, Kalamura Kala is locked in. He wants to win this championship. And everything from the new hammer rule to how you play certain chip shots because playing off the synthetic grass is different than playing off real grass. You can tell the guys who have decided that I've got to figure this out. I want to be better at this. Meanwhile, Hideki Matsuyama admitted that he'd seen just about 10 minutes of TGL and now he's part of the Boston Common team.

That is about to be mathematically eliminated from the SoFi Cup playoffs. Rex, that is a good segue to our next guest. And with that, we're pleased to welcome in Jeff Newbarth, the vice president of media productions for Tomorrow Sports and the driving force behind

for the production and TGL on television. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate the time. You're coming off three matches in two nights. We're wrapping up month two of TGL. The playoffs are on deck. How are you feeling at this point in the inaugural season?

I mean, I'm excited. It's been, you know, a challenge to get to where we are. But, you know, the most satisfying part of the entire journey is just seeing the progress from week to week. And as you mentioned, you know, everyone loves playoffs. Everyone loves postseasons. Everyone loves handing out a trophy. And I'm excited that in just a few short weeks, we'll be doing that here for the first time with TGL presented by SoFi.

And I wanted to add one other title, newest member of the GWA lab. You probably don't know this, but Jeff joined just last week, and I don't even know who the committee chairman that would have allowed him to do that. Jeff, you talk about the challenges. You've been doing this for over two years now. Going back over those last two years or however long it took everyone to get here, what have been the biggest challenges?

Sure. I think, you know, the challenges, I look at them as more opportunities. But if you look at like what's coming up with next year with the NBA, so Amazon and NBC are going to be acquiring NBA rights.

Yet when you look at the coverage, it's going to be amazing. It's going to be excellent. It's going to be premium. It's probably going to look fairly similar to what you see on the networks, ESPN and TNT, who are covering the NBA right now. You're going to see 10 players featured. You're going to see cameras above the backboards. You're going to see super slow-mos. You're going to see graphics. You're going to see a score ticker and a score bug.

when we got together and Jonathan Evans, my partner in crime, our director, and we really started to map out what we wanted this to look like, we could not go watch the other TGL leagues. We could not go observe and see how the other TGL leagues were covering TGL to give us a sense of

you know, look at what it's going to be like. So literally, you know, the group got to start from scratch, which is, again, I look at it more as an opportunity than a challenge, but we have learned so much over these two years and we're still learning from week to week. The thing I'm most looking forward to when I get a down moment is watching show one and then watching our final show on March 25th and just seeing the progress that we have made because truly this is a one-of-one experience

primetime team golf that's much more relatable to an NBA game, a hockey game, any other of the primetime team sports that you see two teams enter, one team's win than anything I've ever done before. So to be able to pull from all these different sports and kind of end up where we are right now, that's been the opportunity. And it's been super fun to be able to take it on. Along those same lines, Jeff, like what are you happiest with at this point? And what do you think still needs work?

Well, I mean, I'm going to always be my own harshest critic, right? So, you know, certainly trying to get to things that I'm happy about are, I think, the progress that we've made. I think that we've done a nice job of going from the first couple weeks where truly we were explaining a sport to now being able to fully cover the sport. And that is a transition that I think

rightfully took the proper amount of time to get people to understand, you know, what this is, what they're watching, that there's a five-story simulator that you're hitting into, and then you have a green that rotates and undulates that the players complete the holes on. That was job one to explain that. Now the job one is to cover the competition.

And I think that that's where you've seen it. And then the other thing I'm super proud of is just how we evolved as a product, whether it's adding the smart pin cam, which came out, debuted on President's Day. And that was something that has been 18 months in the making and could not be happier with how

the process went to get it to where it needed to be and then to debut it on a day that we had three matches. And then I think, you know, be remiss without talking about the competition side and the evolution of our hammer rules and allowing for, you know, the first three matches, there were not that many, sorry, the first five matches, there were not that many hammers thrown. Now almost 46% of all points

that are awarded since the rule was changed on President's Day were due to the hammer. And that's more exciting for viewers, that's more exciting for the fans, and more exciting to the players. And I'm really glad that all of that feedback that came in from players and from the teams and the owners and the competition committee allowed us to make that change.

Lav and I have been down there a couple of times to watch the competitions and obviously blown away by the technology. You pointed out that the flight cam, which was debuted last week. What's next? You don't stop. I've been around you long enough to know that you're not going to sit on what you have right now. What other gadgets are in the garage that we're going to see?

You know, it's really funny because I started an Apple note probably in like October called Season 2 Wishlist. And I am so deep into that note right now that I probably need an entire offseason just to read it and reprioritize it. There are so many things that are opportunities for us to do to get better that we're going to do. I think one thing that's been super exciting for me is –

A lot of people in, you know, whether it's the golf industry or a lot of industries love to be a fast second to something, right? So there are so many technology partners that, you know, we kind of talked with and said, hey, these are some thoughts and ideas and we'd love you to come, you know, check out TGL and see it. They're like, yeah, yeah, we want to wait and see it first. Now that they've seen it,

You know, every day goes by with a call, text or email from someone in some form of technology who has a camera that could plus up this or has a technology that could plus up that or a graphic operation that could make this unique and different, a player tracking, et cetera, et cetera. There are so many things that we're going to be able to do for the next season. I think right now the number one focus for me is just documenting the events.

You know, we're going to get to the playoffs and it's going to get very simple. You're going to have four teams in semifinals. They're going to play one match and the winners move on to the finals. I think that right now is what's next and doing that in a way. But even if you look at the last couple of nights, the graphics enhancements of being able to tell you as soon as both players have hit, how far they are, what the lie is, what they have. And that leads to follow-up graphics, which is, hey,

From this distance last time, Minwoo Lee chipped in. He's the only player in TGL history to have two chip-ins. You know, just storyline advancement is really what's next for me for the next couple weeks.

Jeff, one of the preseason storylines was players being mic'd up. You know, it's Matt Berry, it's Marty Smith, and then it's sort of a bare bones announced crew in that respect. And players being mic'd up for competition has been sort of, you know, hit or miss in the past in some of these exhibitions. How do you think it has worked out so far from your perspective?

Well, the good news is I produced most of the ones that were misses. So I got to learn from those mistakes, right? I think that one of the challenges and I'll put our technical audio team up with anyone's technical audio team. There's so many amazing people who we're all lucky enough to work with in this business, but Joe Karp,

is leading our audio team. And what they've done is nothing short of amazement to me. So, you know, we went into it with this kind of theory that who better to ask about an upcoming shot than the person or the teammate or the opponent of the person who's going to be striking that shot. That was sort of the thesis. That was sort of the mission statement.

Putting six microphones and just leaving them hot all the time is not really a recipe for success. I can tell you from the very first match we produced with Phil and Tiger, we learned that just leaving the microphones up all the time was not a recipe for success. So we have two submixers, one for each team who was listening for them and following Jonathan Evans' cut. If all six players are on the screen, they're all around the green, they're talking for putts, we're probably going to ride all six mics. Then when Jonathan cuts to the team that's about to hit,

we try to remove the mics of the players that are not on camera and let you focus on what you're seeing. So what you're hearing matches what you're seeing. And then we quickly transition to the others. Now, while all that's happening, we have two tape machines with a tape operator and a producer. I still call them tape, uh, EVS, uh, systems. Cause I'm old. That's why I call it tape.

that they're listening to a team at a time. So there's, there's a two person team on our production side, listening to last night, Jupiter and a two person team listening to the Bay. And they're consistently selling me, Hey, while this happened, you,

these folks said this amazing thing and they edit it together and we air that. So we try to come up with how do we give it compelling live? How do we let Matt and Marty intertwine or enhance the conversation? And then how do we replay off of tape something that happened either in a commercial, something that happened while one team was doing something to make sure that we give you kind of the complete story.

Jeff, our audience loves it when we pull back the curtain a little bit and show what goes on behind the cameras and in the control room. You had one of the season's best viral moments with Tiger Woods hitting a 99-yard shot when it was actually a 199-yard shot. What was it like in the control room? We know the reaction from his teammates and the people who were on the field to play, but how did you react to that?

Yeah, I mean, look, first of all, we laughed because, I mean, the way I look at it is if we're not having fun, then that doesn't translate to our announcers and our players having fun, which then hopefully translates to the viewers having fun watching. So the first thing was we had to figure out, okay, what did he actually say? So like I just mentioned, we have a team that is recording the audio from the Jupiter team at all times. So the first thing we did was we rewound the tape and we played it.

So we heard the audio saying 99. So that was the first thing we did. Then the second thing we had to do was we had to send Marty in there to kind of break this down. You know, you got to get the reporter's perspective and Marty's our eyes and ears out there. And he got Tiger putting his arm around him saying it was one of the most embarrassing moments he ever had in his career. Then we had the audio of Tom and Kevin saying, well,

what's he doing with a wedge? So when you kind of put that all together, what I'm most proud of is that, and this is something that we've preached from minute one when everyone came onto this project, is be ready to cover what the moments are. We don't know what the moments are going to be, whether it's Tommy Fleetwood hitting a hole-in-one at 1045 in the morning,

And we have just after crew call and we're in the middle of a camera fax and our team nailed it and recognized the moment and covered it to that viral moment to Dr. Chipinski hitting his second chip in and immediately the guys queuing up the one from a couple weeks ago versus Atlanta.

those are what we try to do in the control room. Uh, but I tell you, we were laughing. We were, we, we were joking. The other one is, you know, JT's, um, kind of flub slash chip in to send it to overtime. That was another one where JT talked about, uh, the other night with, with Scott Van Pelt that his heart rate got up to one 45. Um,

And, you know, and he was laughing about that. He's like, I'm inside. I'm not walking. But my heart rate got up to that high. I were a heart rate monitor during the show, which probably isn't healthy for me or anyone to look at it. But I did look at it and I had a spike at that moment, too, because I remember standing up going, cue it up, cue this one up, that one up. And you know how we are, guys. We all have funny names for our tape machine. So you're just rattling them off and Jonathan's firing them on air. But that's the key, right? Just cover the moment. Be able to cover the moment right.

Got Tigers Miss Club, kisses Blade out of the bunker, kisses Shank on Tuesday night. Jupiter Lynx may not be any good. They may miss the SoFi Cup playoffs, but they are nothing if not content factors. Yeah, I mean, are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? You never know what you're going to get with them out there, and it's always something that I look forward to. Jeff, one thing I wanted to ask, and I'm glad that we have you on here, because TV ratings are all the rage right now.

analyzing, overanalyzing, overanalyzing the overanalyzation of TV ratings. From your perspective, how do you feel about the way that TGL has rated so far?

I mean, the way I look at it is, A, that my job, luckily enough, is to produce the best show I can produce and allow other people to kind of, you know, work on, study, analyze those and try to make sense of them. For me, the one mission that I think that I was the most excited to take on was how do we get a younger audience watching golf? And if you look at the data right now,

Next to the NBA. We are the second youngest sports product out there period We're younger than any other sport out there and that's that's kind of what I look at and that's kind of what I focus on And that's something I think in a small way that I can control with the decisions that we make That having these access to the microphones having the show moves so fast. It's so frenetic It's funny

When we walk out of the truck, my voice is almost a little hoarse because unlike most shows and pick any sport, like any sport that I've been lucky enough to produce, you always get a moment where you can like stop talking and you can like watch the play, whether it's, you know, a golfer hitting a drive and you watch it for seven seconds, carry and roll. And you go to the reaction before you hustle to the next shot or, you know, a football play when they come to the line and you watch it.

We don't have that. It's literally for me, it's nonstop where something is happening that I'm always planning for how we're covering what is about to happen, what may happen, what did happen, and then what's next. So for me, that leads to an incredible pace for us that hopefully translates to the television product, which leads to that younger audience, which was the one goal that I know that I was super excited about the start of the year and that up to now we've been able to accomplish consistently.

And that's something I think that's good for this game, right? That if we can get folks excited about Min Woo Lee on a Tuesday night, well, good news. Min Woo Lee is playing this week on television, and you're going to be able to watch more of him. And if you know who that is and you've seen them in a different way than you've maybe been able to see them before, maybe that younger group will come and watch and take the opportunity to then become –

a bigger fan of the game. And I think we've seen that in participatory space in the sport, right? A couple of years ago was the first time that more golfers played non-traditional off course golf than played on course golf. But guess what? Off course, on course golf is booming too. So there's definitely a correlation between people that maybe go to a top golf and

and then maybe get at some point to a greengrass opportunity. Look, we're just getting started here building something that is a platform and is something that's going to be around for a long time. But if we can keep this younger audience engaged, we can see it. And I'll give you one last example on it is, you know, my oldest, my daughter Harper, who's a junior at the University of Oregon, SCO Ducks. She, about a year and a half ago, two years ago, dove into Drive to Survive.

And now one, the number one thing on her holiday list was a subscription F1 TV. She has this fandom for formula one that she did not even know existed, you know, two, two and a half years ago. And that's because someone came up with a product that was not the main product, right? That's the race that's being televised that captured the next generation and transitioned her from a non-fan to

to an avid fan. That's the goal here. If we can get the younger person watching this, watching it in prime time and in a spot that may be a little more friendly to watch than the middle of the afternoon, whether it's on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Also, you know, not trying to, I know this is, you guys are employees of Golf Channel and the NBC, you know, Comcast Universal World, but ESPN gets a lot of viewers, you know, at night.

in primetime during the week for sporting events. And to be able to put the golfers on ESPN in front of a different group, to have Scott Van Pelt cover golf regularly on his sports center, to have sports center leading into a Duke basketball game with the presumed number one pick in the year, you know, next year's draft and Cooper flag. And then all of a sudden they're talking about golf. That's good for all of us.

No, and that's a perfect pivot because there's been a lot of talk within golf, within the PGA Tour, of how the TV product needs to evolve. We talk about fan forward. We talk about how JT sent a memo to players asking them to be more engaged, trying to make the product from a TV perspective better and different. As someone who spent their entire adult life in the industry, how do you think the TV product changes over the next 10 years?

I can't wait to watch it. You know, I think it's one of those things where, you know, you see moments of opportunity that allow, um,

um, you know, all TV products to get better. You know, if you think about, uh, cause, cause, you know, like you, I think you, that was a nice way of you saying I'm old, but you know, if you think about it, like I remember when we were doing, you know, um, HD for the first time and all of a sudden you could see it better. And, and I remember one year at the PGA championship, I was hired to go sit in a second truck, uh,

and take the CBS feed that Lance and the team were producing and literally pass it through with wings on the side for those who were still watching in standard definition because we didn't have the capability yet to transmit it both in HD and SD. We had to do it out of a separate truck. And for four days, I sat there and just stared at the screen.

But like, it's, it's the evolution is, is, is coming. And, and I think that, you know, the, the folks who do it are, are so talented at it. And I think that, you know, you see little moments of, of push, you know, when, when, when Mark Loomis, you

We did that first show at Fox back at Chambers Bay, and we had tracing everywhere, and we had the full-time scoreboard in the bottom right. I was lucky enough to be part of Mark's team for all those years. We had hut predictor and drones and RC cameras and all these things that had kind of never been done before in golf. Well, those are things that are being done.

The other thing I think that's just so great is, you know, John Friedman and his group at the PGA Tour pushing so hard to get, you know, tracing off the drone to be able to do that. And like all these things that everyone's now, I feel like there's a spirit of camaraderie that I haven't really seen before where everyone's working together, whether it's the players, the networks, everything.

The tour and everyone's recognizing that if we all work together, that there's a strength in numbers. I mean, John Friedman and some of his folks from his team were here last night and came by the truck and said hi. And, you know, I'm sure they're not just sitting here just watching. I'm sure they're looking and seeing the rail cam and seeing our rover cam and seeing our T cams and seeing our stuff, saying, how can we bring that?

out to to to the pga tour i can't wait for the day when the smart pin cam that that we help develop gets used on on on other every golf broadcast as it gets better and better and shows you these unique angles could you imagine that thing uh on on on saturday in the 16th in phoenix

Like, how would that be? Right. Getting 16 ounce beers. Totally. Totally. It's you know what we figured out it withstood Hideki, you know, you basically hitting it with a golf ball. I think that would be harder than whatever the fans could throw at it. So I think we passed its first test. But those are the types of things that I think you're going to see. And look, I think that.

As we continue to evolve, just think about where it's come from in the last eight to 10 years. And to me, that one of those seminal moments is what Mark and Steve Bynum and the group did with the Fox broadcast. And we see a lot of those innovations still happening today. And hopefully that everyone just keeps pushing themselves and will continue to get better and better. I mean, even just having the walk and talks with the players is fantastic. And the more that happens, the more we let people in and the more, you know, the broadcast continues to evolve.

That's a great point about the technological advances. Good nugget there with the tour sort of looking at that as well. How about competitively, Jeff? Do you think there's some things that TGL does that are transferable to the week-in, week-out PGA Tour? Or do you think it's such a different animal that even something that seems pretty universally liked –

such as the shot clock is, is, is probably not transferable to a, or applicable to a PG tour product. Yeah. I mean, that that's for other people to decide for, for me, when I look at what we're doing, this is two teams entering an arena competing against each other in a two hour window to see who gets the most points and wins.

Now, it could be basketball, it could be hockey, it could be football if we were playing inside football in a dome. But this is golf's version of that. This is just live team sports competing. And this is much more akin to any of those than anything that happens on Thursday through Sunday outside on the PGA Tours calendar. So it's hard for me to answer that. You know, do I hope that people like what we're doing and want to see more of it? Great.

that would be nice. But I think that for me, that's a question I really just can't answer, but I definitely would think that there's a lot of people smarter than me that are thinking of things we're doing, or I'm hoping they're thinking of things that we're doing, whether it's coverage opportunities, whether it's some of the technology we're using and seeing how it could potentially enter their broadcast as well. I think we do that. We all do that. If you look at a lot of our technology here,

you know, that, that Rover camera that just drives around. That was one of the challenges I gave Jonathan, our directors. I don't want to see camera operators on the field of play. I wanted to try to do it in a different way where the only people out there are our competitors and, and, and our official. So that, that Ajita cart, you know, camera, the MLS has used that for years. They have it doing corner kicks and it runs up and down the sideline. The dual rail cam is kind of a hybrid between the,

The track and field rail cam that you see during the Olympics and the NFL cart camera that you see during NFL college football with two cameras on it, one to shoot tight and one to shoot wide. The spider cam you see in every NFL game, right? So all of those things we've pulled from other sports and brought into here, I'm sure someone is going to pull things from here and take it into other sports, whether it's golf or not. You know, that's to be determined. I was at the Mets on Monday night and I was looking at the cart cam. Have you ever wrecked it?

No, no. I do have to say you were at the match on Monday night. You didn't come say hi. So I do have a little bone to pick on that. You seem a little busy. You seem a little distracted by your day job. We can catch up after the playoffs. I mean, like 10 minutes ago, you just went through everything that happens with Tiger Woods' Miss Club and who your bargain order is at and the Brexiteers.

Rex has got a much easier job compared to what you got in the producer chair. But I will say lots of people did manage to come by and stay high and Rex was not among them. But in terms of the car cam, no, we have not wrecked the car cam. The one that did get me nervous is we have a drone flying in here and the drone flies near the spider cam. And I'm pretty sure they do it just to mess with me. They get eerily close to each other and they're sitting right next to each other back there in the broadcast operations area. And I know they're talking, but

Every single time I see it, I do kind of like cringe and kind of duck and stuff. You know, it was funny. These are the drone folks that we used to do the first kind of FPV drone instead of taking the place of aerials in one of the made-for-TV events. And the first time they did it, they put the goggles on me, and they had me stand there. And I have an aversion to motion. Like when I go to a theme park with my family, I'm the one who doesn't ride the rides.

And they put this on, and they literally sped as fast as they could, dodging through trees and whatever, and I nearly fell down. They all laughing. I take the goggles off like, oh, you're not supposed to stand wearing those. So I'm pretty sure they're out to get me at all times, and this is just one of those other opportunities that they take. But the cart has not come close. The cart did kind of get close to Billy Horschel at one point, which would have been for a fun made-for-TV special, Billy vs. Cart.

But Billy's so nimble, he dodged and got out of the way. But it's definitely been a learning curve for the players and us to kind of see where we can push and where we can go and where we can't.

I wanted to do full disclosure here. You were actually probably one of my original producers back in the morning drive days before we left Studio AP in Orlando. And I'm reluctant to do this. I'm very loathe to do this, actually. But I did tease it. So I guess I don't have a choice now. You were there for my worst moment in TV. Would you like to pick up that story?

Well, I think you have it all wrong. I think that that you what you didn't know. No, I think what you what you didn't do was something that that you're known for, which is is get all the facts of the story and and cover them. So so to make this this long, boring story short and quick.

is we were on the air during President's Day, the cast of Morning Drive. We were sitting five wide at the desk, and we were discussing presidential impact and greatest golfers for presidents. And for whatever reason, Rex –

said a very valid right answer, but just didn't have the facts to back it up. So I'm sure Gary said Eisenhower because Gary can't do anything without trying to score another invitation to play around at Augusta National. So we had to talk about Eisenhower and the Pine. I don't remember who Charlie said. I'm sure he tried to say something funny and it wasn't.

I'm sure Holly said something great. I don't know what Damon said, but I know he probably related it to covering Kobe at some point in his career because Damon likes to remind people that he covered Kobe in his career. And then it got to Rex and you kind of froze. And the other note that I had had is there is a president.

who was responsible for over 300 municipal golf courses being built as part of his new works program, which probably got more people playing the game than almost any other president would have done. And this person also, when they attended Harvard, won a bet against his classmates by bragging he did a 300-yard drive.

He was so cunning and smart and sly that he did it on an icy pond, and the ball did go over 300 yards, and that president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR. Now, the image that a lot of people have in FDR is after he had polio and he was in a wheelchair, but prior to that, he played the game at a very high level,

You know, Taft was the first president to play in an office, right? And all you were missing, Rex, were the facts that I just stated. And if you would have had that, you would have been, you know, probably looked at as the most visionary and forward thinking of the group on the panel. And instead, you kind of said it and froze. And then we quickly went to a commercial to end the awkwardness.

But the facts are the facts. And I walked out of the studio thinking that this is the last time I walk out of the studio. I expected the text message to just go pack your things, keep walking. But if all the facts were presented – but, Lev, the other thing in the other segment, and this is a week that I miss it more than others because we're down here in Palm Beach Gardens, and the media center, of course, this week is named after our late great friend Tim Rosefort –

One of my things that we used to do, look, Morning Drive was on a lot of hours. Like it was a lot of hours. Some would argue it was on too many hours. I think a lot of would argue it was on too many hours. And whenever we didn't know what to do, we would just call it dueling notebooks, go. And we would take whoever was hosting and they would just literally look at Rex and Tim. And it was almost like the dueling banjos, right? You say something, you say something, and eventually we'll tell you to stop saying something when we can finally get to the next commercial break in this format.

And you should have seen, Lab, the stress on the two of these guys' faces because they don't know what's in each other's notebooks. They both at that point, Tim in particular, a little intense when he would go on these morning segments. And they also needed to make sure that their sources were protected for the things that they were saying. So what we learned over the years was the more uncomfortable they got, the more we did this segment.

and that was something that I always enjoyed in the program was to be able to make them both a little uncomfortable because they were great at it, and the viewers learned out of it, but they hated every second of doing it. I mean, Tim was...

He's Hall of Fame. He's Cooperstown. Like you were putting me in a position to go ahead and have the best in the business. He's the one that defined the role that I now have. And I saw Tim's wife, Genevieve, just this week, and she came up and gave me a big hug. And every time she sees me, she asked me how close Tim and I were. And I always say the same answer. We weren't. He scared me to death. Yeah. Yeah.

So there was no better person to put you next to in television than Tim Rosa for it. And we all enjoyed it. Competition always makes you better. Absolutely. Absolutely. I certainly miss those morning drive days. I was just a young pup.

Try not to screw up my own little hits, but I would see Rosie with his notes, rehearsing his notes, rehearsing exactly what he was going to say. We miss him dearly. Jeff Babineau, our former colleague at Golf Week, recognized this week the Tim Rosenford Award as well. Jeff, thank you so much. Thank you for that great story. We certainly appreciate your insights and perspective as it relates to TGL. Best of luck with the upcoming SoFi Cup playoffs. Look forward to talking to you down the road. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

And Rex, I thought that was a great conversation. Certainly a helpful peek behind the curtain for us since we talked about TGL so much on this podcast. What'd you take away from that conversation with Jeff? He's really, yeah, you look at Jeff Newbarth, you and I have known him a long time, and he is really a revolutionary type producer. When he was at Golf Channel working at Morning Drive, as we touched on, he was always kind of pushing the boundaries even back then when he went to Fox.

and they got the USGA contract. He was pushing boundaries. And it's fun to see that he's doing it now. And I love the idea that there's a lot of things right now that TGL is doing that you can imagine could be implemented into the regular telecast, the flag cam, the cart cam, all of these different things. I

I pushed back a little bit on the idea that you sort of dismissed the shot clock. I'm not dismissive of that. I think there might be a way to work that in to the modern game. I don't know if players would embrace it like we probably want them to, but I think everything TGL is doing is interesting.

Yeah, super sharp guy. Obviously, he's decades of experience. Speak to that. Like I had the same takeaway. First of all, it's really hard to put golf on television. There's people who sit on social media and criticize the products and say, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? He literally just outlined it.

He has a million things going on in his head. So producing live television has got to be, for golf, has got to be one of the hardest things possible. It's not like football. It's not like basketball where everything's sort of confined. And so to see how he's doing that for TGL, I think is great. And the innovations, like,

Yeah, I think there are criticisms of the product and how it can sort of be advanced over the next decade. It seems like TGL is leading that way with some of the technological innovations and the enhancements. Hopefully over the coming years, they borrow some of those ideas. All right.

As mentioned earlier, it's the Cognizant Classic this week on the PGA Tour. Rex and I will be back on Sunday night on YouTube and on Golf Channel at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday mornings to recap all of that at PGA National and all the other happenings in the world of golf. If you want to be on the show, just as a reminder, and this is important,

Hit us up with a question in the comments section or find us on Instagram, Twitter, et cetera. We'll try to devote some time at the end of the podcast to listen to questions. We always try, not always deliver. This week, we are going to be committed to trying to do more of those. All right. In the meantime, you guys are the drill. NBCSports.com slash golf for our latest news, notes, and updates. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. We'll talk to you guys on Sunday night.

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