Agoura Resident Stars In National TV Show Tonight

AGOURA HILLS, CA — As a cheerleader and “Charger Chuck” mascot at Agoura High School, Matt Goldberg got a small taste of the craziness that awaited him more than two decades later.

Goldberg, an Agoura Hills native and realtor who’s moving back to his hometown later this summer, was a contestant on Holey Moley, an ABC mini-golf competition show whose second season airs tonight at 9 p.m. PST.

Back when Goldberg (Agoura High School class of 1998) was Charger Chuck, he dressed up as a knight in full body armor and boogied on down before large crowds. As a mini-golf contestant on a proudly zany show, he found himself running through giant windmills, jumping onto moving sharks, running through porta-potties, and escape fire-breathing dragons.

“I would say that it’s a very different venue, but experiences like cheerleading at Agoura, not just in the games but we competed pretty heavily and pretty aggressively – I think those experiences early on set me up for success at Holey Moley,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg, an avid golfer who loves playing at the Westlake Golf Course in West Hills, was intrigued by the ads for the show’s first season when it aired last year. As he and his wife Sara were preparing to move back to Agoura Hills, she joined a Conejo Valley mothers group on Facebook. A member posted about an open casting call for Holey Moley, and Goldberg said he put on his best argyle shorts and attended the first casting call.

After several interviews and a putting screen test, Goldberg made the cut. For a few weeks in January, Goldberg competed against 98 other contestants at an expanded version of the Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita to win the grand $250,000 prize.

“This is the most extreme mini-golf course I’ve ever seen – the course is towering over your head, it’s just huge – it’s a mini-golf amusement park,” Goldberg said. “Every hole is like a puzzle that you gotta solve … whether that’s miniature golf or real golf, there’s always an obstacle to navigate. You have to figure out the speed, the distance, and it’s very, very tricky to navigate it when it’s so different …[Mike Tyson] said that everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And this course was a really big punch in the mouth.”

In the early episodes, Goldberg went head-to-head with other contestants, and each episode has a winner. After a few episodes, all the episode winners compete for the top prize. Goldberg already knows who the main winner is, but is contractually forbidden from saying anything about it – despite some family members desperate to get it out of him.

Goldberg said he had an incredible time filming, and is looking forward to watching the show with his family tonight. He thinks its whimsical escapism is the perfect antidote for our troubled times.

“It’s very irreverent,” he said. “Especially for these crazy coronavirus times, it’s a good distraction and it couldn’t come any sooner for what we’re all going through, so for an hour a night to just go into a fantasy land – I promise there are holes you will watch where you will laugh, it will make your jaw drop, it’ll make you shake your head, because it’s like, ‘Who could imagine these ridiculous things?’”