ORLANDO, Fla. -- Golf Channel's first round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship is expected to generate record-setting ratings and Web traffic for the network.

Preliminary projections of Wednesday's coverage - which also marked the highly anticipated return of Tiger Woods - show Golf Channel will garner the highest first-round rating on the network, and likely will surpass the network's highest rating ever (2.0, Friday of 2008 WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship).

Web traffic on GolfChannel.com also posted unprecedented gains, with Wednesday page views totaling 3.3 million and nearly 468,000 visits to the site.

"We're very encouraged by these successes and believe that 2009 is shaping up to be a great year for the Golf Channel in all areas of the company," said Golf Channel President Page Thompson.

The success of the Accenture ratings continues positive viewership trends on the network across all the major golf tours in 2009, as well as for non-tournament programming. The final round of the 50th Bob Hope Classic (1.3) set a record as the most-watched round of PGA TOUR action on Golf Channel without Woods in the field. Coinciding with the news of Golf Channel's new 10-year, exclusive agreement with the LPGA Tour, the SBS Open at Turtle Bay saw a 39% increase in viewership from 2008 and the final round was the highest-rated LPGA tournament round on the channel since last spring's McDonalds' LPGA Championship, which is a LPGA major. Additionally, viewership for both The European Tour and Champions Tour is up over 2008.

For more information, contact Dan Higgins, GOLF CHANNEL Public Relations, 407-355-4018 or dhiggins@golfchannel.com