Director of Product Design · 2018 — 2021
GOLFTV
Global Streaming for Golf
The Challenge
The PGA Tour wanted to bring live golf to a global audience outside the US. GOLFTV was a joint venture with Discovery to build a dedicated streaming platform from scratch — live tournament coverage, on-demand content, player profiles, and leaderboards. We had to design and ship a product that could handle live broadcasts to 180+ countries across web, iOS, Android, and connected TV.
The Approach
Designed the product from zero. No existing patterns to follow — golf streaming didn't exist at this scale. Started with the core experience: how do you watch a live golf tournament? It's not like watching a football match with a clear start and end. Golf has multiple groups, multiple holes, multiple featured groups all playing simultaneously.
Built a leaderboard-first experience. In golf, the leaderboard is the heartbeat of the tournament. We designed it as a persistent, always-accessible layer — not a separate page you navigate to. Live scores updating in real-time, expandable player cards, hole-by-hole breakdowns.
Created a cross-platform design system that maintained consistency from mobile to connected TV. The 10-foot experience (TV) required fundamentally different interaction patterns than the 10-inch experience (tablet), but the visual language had to feel unified.
Designed the content discovery for a sport with unique rhythms — a tournament spans Thursday through Sunday, with different rounds having different significance. The UI had to adapt to where you were in the tournament lifecycle.
From Zero to Global
Building a streaming product from scratch is rare. Most design work is iteration — improving something that exists. GOLFTV was a blank canvas with a hard deadline: the first PGA Tour event of the season. We had months, not years. The approach was ruthlessly prioritized — launch with the core live experience, then layer in features tournament by tournament. Every design sprint ended with 'will this be ready for the next event?'
The Golf Problem
Golf is the hardest sport to design for in streaming. A tournament has 156 players, 18 holes, 4 days, and dozens of simultaneous storylines. There's no single feed to watch — you have to choose between featured groups, featured holes, and the main broadcast. We designed a navigation system that made this complexity feel manageable: a persistent tournament hub with quick-switch between feeds, smart defaults based on what's most interesting right now, and a timeline that showed you what you missed.
Outcomes
Live golf streaming platform launched in 180+ countries
Cross-platform design system (web, iOS, Android, connected TV)
Leaderboard experience with real-time score updates
On-demand content library with player-centric navigation
Next Project
Access by Troon
Platform Design & Design Systems