Tirico Finds That This Role Fits Him to a Tee

When Mike Tirico was growing up in Queens, N.Y., idolizing Marv Albert and Bob Costas and dreaming of being a play-by-play announcer, golf isn’t what he envisioned.

Not that he had anything against golf. He enjoyed playing the game whenever his uncle, who was in the advertising business, invited him along when entertaining clients and there was an opening.

But Tirico, who has a 14 handicap, always dreamed of doing football, baseball or basketball play-by-play. Yankee Stadium, the Meadowlands and Madison Square Garden continually popped up in this thoughts. Never St. Andrews.

But St. Andrews is where Tirico is this week. He is in his fourth year as host of ABC’s golf coverage, and at the British Open he’ll be in his usual spot alongside Curtis Strange, directing traffic and making sure everything goes smoothly. For this tournament, Tirico also will be joined by co-host Jim McKay.

When Tirico got the job at the start of 1997, more than a few people in golf raised eyebrows. Who is Mike Tirico and what qualifies him to announce golf?

Tirico showed that, first and foremost, he’s a talented communicator with a natural passion for sports and broadcasting. He also showed that he understood his role. He is not a golf expert. Strange and others on the ABC crew are the experts, and Tirico plays to them.

Tirico, 33, is on his way to becoming one of the biggest stars in sports broadcasting. He has natural ability and he’s a tireless worker. He’s famous for the black canvas bags he travels with that are crammed with newspaper clippings, golf magazines and books.

Tirico credits his mother, Marie, for his work ethic.

“She is my hero,” said Tirico, an only child.

His father left when he was young and he has no contact with him.

Marie, a branch manager for a major bank who worked her way up from teller, was both mother and father.

“If I wanted to play catch, she’d play catch,” Tirico said.

A good student, Tirico went to Syracuse, the school that produced Albert, Costas and many other broadcasters. By his junior year, Tirico was working in local television. At 24, he was working for ESPN and soon was one of the anchors on “SportsCenter.”

But he wanted to do play-by-play. After all, that was his childhood dream. In 1994, he told Steve Anderson, the head of production, of his desires.

There was an opening in golf. Jim Kelly, ESPN’s host for senior golf, was headed off to cover yachting’s America’s Cup. Anderson asked Tirico if he would like to fill in on the two tournaments Kelly would miss. Tirico got his first taste of golf broadcasting.

Three years later, after Disney purchased ABC and ESPN, Steve Bornstein, the president of ESPN, was put in charge of ABC Sports as well. Bornstein brought Anderson down from ESPN in Bristol, Conn., to New York to head up sports production at the network, although Anderson has since gone back to ESPN.

When Anderson got the ABC job, one of his first assignments was to find a replacement for Brent Musburger as the network’s golf host. He thought of Tirico.

Anderson told producer Jack Graham, “You’re going to love this guy.”

And Graham did.

Tirico’s first tournament was the 1997 Mercedes Championships at La Costa.

“We only gave him the 18th hole to call,” Graham said. “He could have handled more.

“I’d never seen anyone immediately do golf so well. He got it right off the bat.

“He knows his role and he’s great at setting up Curtis. He has a knack of drawing things out of people.”

Tirico has enjoyed doing golf more than he thought he would. He says one reason is because of the people he works with.

“Curtis and I have become more than just broadcast partners,” he said. “We’ve become close friends. If I had to turn to someone for advice in either professional or personal life, Curtis would be one of the first I would turn to.

“I think it comes across on the air just how well we also get along off the air.”

Tirico says Strange also has helped with his golf game. They play about once a week.

Tirico recalls playing with Strange and two other members of the crew, Andy North and Ian Baker Finch, at Kapalua in Maui earlier this year and realizing he was a little overmatched.

“Three people in our foursome had won a combined five major titles,” Tirico said. “Then there was me.”

An ability to not take himself too seriously is one reason Tirico is popular with co-workers and viewers. It is a quality to be admired.

The British Open is the eighth golf tournament in nine weeks for ABC, and its fifth in a row.

“It would have been nice to have a break before the British Open,” Graham said. “But we’ll manage.”

Tirico will work about 20 golf events this year, and he will again do Thursday night college football for ESPN, host ESPN’s “NFL Monday Night Countdown” show and then do some college basketball play-by-play.

Tirico says the schedule is a nice fit. He certainly doesn’t want to work much more, particularly because he and his wife of nine years, Debbie, have a 9-week-old son, Jordan.

“No,” Tirico said, anticipating a question he hears a lot, “he was not named after Michael. My wife picked the name.”

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The British Open, the only major played on foreign soil, is different than any other tournament for American television to cover, and not only because of the difference in time zones.

ABC is not in control. The BBC provides much of the coverage for ABC and other broadcasters from throughout the world. ABC has nine cameras of its own for supplemental coverage, but the ABC production staff is faced with a juggling act.

“It makes things difficult because we can’t control the shots,” Graham said. “Our commentators may be just beginning to talk about a player, then the BBC will jump off that player.”

ABC must also find spots for commercial breaks.

“Our goal is to have a seamless telecast, where the viewer at home is unaware we are using someone else’s pictures,” Graham said.

Graham, a native of Vancouver who grew up in New York, is a 1978 graduate of USC. A business major, he got his start at ABC while still in school, working as a production assistant at the 1977 L.A. Open, which ABC televised.

He has been involved with golf on television in some capacity ever since, learning his craft from the highly respected Terry Jastrow, ABC’s longtime golf producer. Jastrow, who in 1987 became the president of Jack Nicklaus Productions, had to cut back on his ABC schedule until he was producing only ABC’s six biggest tournaments. Graham was doing the others.

When Anderson came aboard, he wanted a golf producer who was available for every event. So Graham took over.