Matt Barrie is again in the anchor chair for ESPN at the Masters.
ESPN
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Every little thing at the Masters is bigger than existence. Very well, besides for the television studio.
On a rainy Tuesday in Augusta, the studio developing lurched from the ground in a heap of white. The residence of untold several hours of Masters tv was scarcely obvious in its perch amongst the trees. Transform your head the completely wrong way down the promenade adjacent to the exercise array and you may possibly pass up it altogether.
In the situation of the studio, we’re working with ‘home’ practically. From the exterior, the creating seems to be indiscernible from your standard two-story dwelling. White columns guard the front doorway. Windows poke out into the world exterior. A walkway bisects a neatly manicured lawn.
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This is the Masters daily life of Matt Barrie, who’s sitting down in a steel chair on the entrance porch. The SportsCenter host is one of the lucky number of who have adopted the Augusta Nationwide television studio as an April family vacation household.
In the course of event 7 days, ESPN’s corner of the studio is his dwelling room … if you could contact it that. It is a studio all ideal — around the similar size of a studio apartment in midtown Manhattan — and on a busy morning in Augusta, this studio can fill with as quite a few as 10 people today.
Augusta National’s ESPN studio does have a trump card about the studio residences of New York City, even though. When the solar is shining, a garage doorway opens to reveal a substantial, open up-air perspective of the most wonderful driving vary on earth.
Barrie, who is now 43, has been close to the sports activities entire world a several periods around. Initially as a nearby tv sports reporter in these types of rugged locales as Wausau, Wis., and Lawton, Okla. and later as a host extraordinaire for ESPN. He’ll be crunched into the Augusta Countrywide studio internet hosting “SportsCenter” live studies for ESPN for the superior component of the 7 days. It’ll be his 10th Masters for the network, but he admits he’d host SC from a broom closet if it intended investing match 7 days in Augusta.
“I was on cloud nine,” Barrie claims, flashing a grin as he tells the story of his initially Masters Television assignment for ESPN. “I was managing all around the property. To go sit there with Andy North and Curtis Unusual on a weekend at the Masters. It was a desire.”
The existence of a “SportsCenter” Host throughout Masters 7 days is a nomadic just one, Barrie admits. As the event innovations the agenda grows significantly less predictable by the hour.
“I obtained in town Sunday, and then started carrying out the SportsCenter things Monday morning. Then SportsCenter Tuesday. I’ll do all of that by Friday. I’ll do all of our SportsCenter lead-in protection on Saturday from 3-7 p.m, and then I’ll do the publish-protection display at 7:30. Then I’ll contact characteristic holes — holes no. 4, 5 and 6 — for ESPN+…
“So, you know, slumber is optional,” he suggests with a laugh, however I’m rather absolutely sure he’s only 50 %-kidding.
Matt Barrie will be a very long way from ESPN’s behemoth Bristol SportsCenter studio this 7 days.
ESPN
Even now, there is 1 certainty to Barrie’s 7 days: Tiger Woods.
“Every minute of Television set I’ve performed so far has been Tiger-connected,” He suggests. “He is the needle. I imply, Monday felt like a Saturday. You could explain to there was a hum, that a little something was different likely on.”
Of program, the 15-time significant winner has not officially announced his intention to engage in in this week’s Masters, but his mere existence at the match is extra than ESPN, or any individual used by the community, predicted.
Following all, it was Barrie who broke the news of Tiger’s in close proximity to-existence-ending crash in 2021 to the planet on ESPN just 14 months in the past.
“I was ready for the producer to get in my ears and tell me, ‘Tiger Woods is useless,’” Barrie suggests, remembering that fateful working day. “Then I was gonna have to be the individual to explain to the athletics earth on ESPN that we have dropped Tiger Woods.”
Really should Tiger return to the sports activities environment on the 1st tee at Augusta National at 10:34 a.m. on Thursday early morning, Barrie will as soon as yet again be the man to deliver the news.
“To be equipped to be on air at the time,” Barrie claims. “At 10:34, it’ll be my pleasure to say, ‘Let’s go to the 1st tee box to enjoy Tiger Woods return to the Masters,’ and not say a further word. Just let the viewer have it.”
Moments like these, Barrie says, are when ESPN’s Augusta Countrywide studio arrives alive. All 500 square toes of it.
“Now he’s gonna miss out on the fairway on No. 1 — that does not subject,” Barrie claims with a giggle. “It will be Tiger Woods walking the study course at Augusta National. It is heading to be a single of the excellent comeback stories ever from a guy who now gave us that.”
