Gavin Cooney reviews the launch night of TGL, a new tech-infused, simulator-based golf league. Despite initial skepticism, Cooney finds TGL to be a surprisingly enjoyable and original take on the sport, praising the energy, format, and the players' personalities.
Gavin Cooney THE FUTURE NOWADAYS is best shied away from, but this column is aware of its responsibilities and this week subjected itself to the full glare of tomorrow in the name of golf. For it was this week that brought the long-awaited launch of TGL, the new tech-infused, simulator-based golf league part-founded by Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods. (The start date was postponed by a year as the venue suffered storm damage.
) The idea was developed in the wake of the LIV rupture, and is the PGA Tour’s first instance of innovation in the face of competition that isn’t ‘stuff the players’ pockets with more money.’ Launch night was given prime-time exposure on ESPN on Tuesday night, which regrettably meant a graveyard slot in Europe. And so, as the clock strikes 2am on Wednesday morning, we sit down on the couch and wedge some extra-long matchsticks beneath our eyelids, so as to allow extra room for eye-rolling. A thumping sound-track heralds “the next big thing”, as ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt says TGL is still golf, but golf “reimagined for the world of 2025″. “The game has changed,” says McIlroy in the opening VT, and he and Woods are centre-stage on opening night, but neither are playing. Van Pelt says the essence of TGL is “the team, the team, the team”, which are as painfully constructed as those on LIV. Opening night is Bay Golf Club versus New York GC, which ESPN try to sell as a kind of Clash of the Coasts. Maybe this is the only version of Biggie versus Tupac that might appeal to an audience who dream of playing Augusta National. The Bay Golf Club line-up is Shane Lowry, Ludvig Aberg, and Wyndham Clark, against the New York GC trio of Xander Schauffele, Rickie Fowler, and Matt Fitzpatrick. While it makes business sense to ape American sports franchises, the team rosters are bizarre, given the only west coast-born players in action (Schauffele, Fowler) are representing the east coast. Plus, there’s something not quite Silicon Valley about Lowry. Advertisement The teams ahead of the inaugural match. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo The format is pleasingly straight-forward. A match consists of 15 holes, nine of which are played as three-man alternate shot, with the final six used as a singles competition, with players from each team going head-to-head. The screen into which the players are hitting is ginormous, five-storeys high and 24 times larger than a standard simulator. Players tee off from real grass, while there’s a real patch of rough and another patch of sand for players to take their second shots if they don’t land on the fairway. Everything within 50 yards of the hole, however, is played on a real green in the arena. The hole location changes each time, and the green’s undulations change too, thanks to 600 hydraulic jacks beneath its surface. There is a contrivance called “the hammer”, whereby the team in possession can throw it to the floor and challenge the opponent to go double or quits on the hole: victory on a hole is worth a single point, a tie is worth nothing. Health and safety may sadly have precluded the use of an actual hammer, so instead it’s a kind of yellow cloth that floats, un-hammerlike, to the ground. There’s also a 40-second shot-clock, which the broadcast says is consistent with the rules of golf, as shocking as that may sound to Patrick Cantlay and all those who have watched him. The arena fits around 1500 fans who are encouraged to be as loud as they want, with music playing throughout. (TGL might silently curse the fact LIV got their first with the Golf, But Louder slogan.) The arena is enormous, and so the music has the tinny, half-hearted sound of Christmas music playing a little too quietly in a B&Q. The other addition is an on-field referee, who we are told once worked in the NBA. The limit of his involvement is to tell the players to shake hands and then begin playing, making him the most pointless adornment in golf since the President’s Cup. Sitting in the Sportscentre studio, Van Pelt interviews the New York trio prior to the start, and then swivels in his chair to catch a quick pre-game word with Aberg. “I hope you’re as excited as I am,” says Aberg, deathlessly. If brushed aluminium has a sound, this is it. The players are welcomed into the arena like boxers doing a ring walk, and it falls to Lowry to hit the first tee shot in TGL history. He joked ahead of time about worrying he would miss the giant screen in front of him, and he initially forgets his tee when standing up to the shot. He stripes it down the digital fairway. Lowry has also taken out his earpiece for his opening shot, which is a TGL no-no. The players are mic-ed up at all times, while they can hear and interact with the commentators throughout. The honour also falls to Lowry to drop the first F-bomb of TGL, describing as Aberg drive as “so fucking good”. The battle between Lowry and the ESPN censors promises to be one of the chief animating tensions of TGL. Later, an ESPN reporter says he asked Lowry off-mic about how he felt about his opening shot. “He said ‘I nearly soiled me pants’, though he didn’t use the word ‘soiled.’” That we can hear the players proves to be one of the highlights, as they work as caddies for each other, advising on shots and helping to read putts. It’s occasionally chaotic as players talk over one another, and all are occasionally muffled by intrusions from the ESPN commentator. But it’s generally excellent, and offers an insight into the players’ personalities. McIlroy and Woods. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo One potential future issue here, of course, is the reliance on the charisma of professional golfers, most of whom are personality cul de sacs. Wyndham Clark chatters away incessantly, but Lowry provides the better-timed sidekick humour. “I am going to be the Scottie Scheffler of indoor golf”, he says at one stage, later describing a shot out of a bunker as “much like myself, a little chunky”. Where Lowry can carry this thing, we fear Keegan Bradley might struggle. What hostility in the crowd is carried by a lone woman heckling Clark, with a kind of reverse Ger Loughnane, albeit in the same, over-stressed syllables. Yooo aarree going tooo miss!! Future matches will benefit from letting the booze run more freely. Woods and McIlroy, meanwhile, will play over the next fortnight, and both join the commentary team on opening night, with Woods giving enough nerdy insight into the grain around the green to satisfy the golf sickos while stressing that TGL is a means of showcasing golf to a new audience. A cynic might also point out that it’s also a means of showcasing Tiger Woods to an existing audience. “I haven’t been part of the playing process in quite a while,” deadpans Woods. Such is the speed of the shots, Woods and McIlroy’s commentary feels a little superfluous, as they speak over the action and the players’ reactions. There are other utterly needless broadcast additions, including an interview with the bafflingly ubiquitous DJ Khaled about his love of golf. The Irish equivalent to this would be interrupting the Poc Fada to ask Mark McCabe about his hurling career. Various eminent real-life course architects have been hired to design 30 bespoke holes for TGL, and some of them are fabulously creative: one hole is staged in the Grand Canyon, while another is played over molten rock. Golf, But With More The Floor is Lava. Realism is maintained by the fact Rickie Fowler plays hopelessly, and the opening match is a rout: Lowry’s Bay Golf Club hammer their opponents 9-2, and the contest is over before the contest is mathematically over before the singles’ matches even start. Even allowing for a couple of ad-breaks and utterly pointless time-outs, the whole thing is wrapped up in less than two hours. The players generally josh about and laugh and seem to be having a great time, and while much of golf is ruined by the furrowed-brow seriousness of its organisers and broadcasters, TGL will have to balance its liberated spirit with the sense that players genuinely care about winning. Woods’ bizarre intensity should happily take care of that problem, mind. Pitching TGL as golf’s version of T20 cricket seems too optimistic, but the sheer energy and originality of the thing should earn it a few weeks’ grace among prospective fans. There are lots of improvements to be made, and while TGL must yet prove that losing matters while withstanding the awesome weight of Patrick Cantlay’s vapidity, this is one message from the future that has its own future. The clock rolls around to 4am and we pluck the matchsticks from our tired eyes, saying a little eulogy for our miserable cynicism. This TGL business is really quite…good
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