After years of anticipation, the high-tech indoor golf league spearheaded by two of the sport’s modern greats is finally ready to tee off Tuesday night.
Led by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, TGL will begin at their custom-built Florida venue, the SoFi Center, and will be broadcast on ESPN having initially meant to start last year.
The virtual nature and the 1,500-capacity stadium it will be hosted in is aimed at attracting a younger audience. The venture is the brainchild of TMRW Sports, a company co-founded by Woods and McIlroy.
The opening game of the new league sees the trio of Rickie Fowler, Matt Fitzpatrick and Xander Schauffele of the New York Golf Club take on The Bay Golf Club’s Shane Lowry, Wyndham Clark and Ludvig Åberg.
Ahead of Tuesday’s opening match, McIlroy described it as “golf, but it’s reimagined, sort of trying to take golf into the 21st century.”
“We have teams, obviously, there’s a lot of technology involved, trying to bring it into the digital era,” he told ESPN. “A lot of things that we’ve taken from other sports like a shot-clock, a timeout, things that you don’t see in regular golf. (We’re) trying to appeal to that bigger sports audience out there.”
McIlroy also added that he and Woods have been extremely hands on during the organizational period of their new tournament.
“Tiger and I have been a part of this from day one and whenever you see the concepts and the renderings you think, ‘Yeah, that looks really cool,’” McIlroy told ESPN. “But until you actually stand in here (the SoFi Center) and you see what they’ve been able to do, I think the scale of it is the thing for me that blows my mind.
“Every time I step in here, I’m just blown away by the size of the screen, the fact that we’re able to put something that looks like golf on a stage like this. It’s really cool and we’re obviously really excited about it within the game of golf. I think a lot of other people outside of the game are going to see this and hopefully get excited about it as well.”
What is the format?
Teeing off Tuesday night, six teams comprising of 24 mic’d up stars of the PGA Tour will compete across a 15-match regular season at the 1,500-capacity arena in Palm Beach Gardens before the postseason begins, culminating in a best-of-three Finals Series showdown for the SoFi Cup on March 24.
Golfers on each four-player team will hit tee and approach shots into a 64-by-53-foot simulator before moving to the GreenZone; a green that can be uniquely rotated and sloped on each hole thanks to a turntable and actuators under its surface.
“The playing surfaces are very realistic,” McIlroy explained. “Whenever you hit it out of the rough, you have to think about whether you’re going to get a flyer (or) whether it’s going to come out soft. A lot of things that you would have to think about on a real golf course.”
A single match is contested over two sessions, with each match seeing three players from each team going head-to-head over 15 specially designed holes and two different formats – nine holes of triples and six holes of singles.
Triples sees the three players on a team rotate who hits shots as well as taking turns to tee off. The singles format has players matched directly with an opponent, with each player on the team of three playing two singles holes.
Each hole is worth one point, a tied hole is worth no points and the team with the most points at the end of the match wins. If the scores are level after 15 holes, a closest to the pin competition will decide the winner.
An added element of intrigue is the “Hammer,” which allows teams to double the value of a hole. If it is accepted by the opposition, a hole is worth two points. The opposition team could choose to play the “Hammer” on the same hole making it worth three points but could also use it later in the match.
If a team declines their opponents’ use of the “Hammer,” they concede the hole and the points on offer.
The makeup of the teams’ various ownership groups makes for a who’s who of sporting heavyweights, with tennis sisters Serena and Venus Williams, NBA stars Giannis Antetokounmpo and Steph Curry, as well as Liverpool soccer club owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG), among the backers.
Plenty of major winners are littered throughout the players involved in TGL, with both Woods and McIlroy also taking part.
TGL teams
Atlanta Drive GC
Justin Thomas (USA), Patrick Cantlay (USA), Billy Horschel (USA), Lucas Glover (USA)
Boston Common Golf
Rory McIlroy (Northern Ireland), Hideki Matsuyama (Japan), Keegan Bradley (USA), Adam Scott (Australia)
Jupiter Links Golf Club
Tiger Woods (USA), Max Homa (USA), Tom Kim (South Korea), Kevin Kisner (USA)
Los Angeles Golf Club
Collin Morikawa (USA), Sahith Theegala (USA), Justin Rose (England), Tommy Fleetwood (England)
New York Golf Club
Matt Fitzpatrick (England), Rickie Fowler (USA), Xander Schauffele (USA), Cameron Young (USA)
The Bay Golf Club
Ludvig Åberg (Sweden), Wyndham Clark (USA), Min Woo Lee (Australia), Shane Lowry (Ireland)
TGL schedule
Regular season
January 7: New York GC vs. The Bay GC
January 14: Los Angeles GC vs. Jupiter Links GC
January 21: New York GC vs. Atlanta Drive GC
January 27: Jupiter Links GC vs. Boston Common GC
February 4: Boston Common GC vs. Los Angeles GC
February 17: Atlanta Drive GC vs. Los Angeles GC, Atlanta Drive GC vs. The Bay GC, The Bay GC vs. Boston Common GC
February 18: Jupiter Links GC vs. New York GC
February 24: Los Angeles GC vs. New York GC, Boston Common GC vs. Atlanta Drive GC
February 25: The Bay GC vs. Jupiter Links GC
March 3: The Bay GC vs. Los Angeles GC, New York GC vs.
Boston Common GC
March 4: Jupiter Links GC vs. Atlanta Drive GC
Postseason
Semifinals: March 17, March 18
Finals Series: March 24, March 25
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