Monday night’s TGL match between Rory McIlroy’s Boston Common Golf and Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links delivered the startup league’s best match to date and potentially showed them the formula for long-term success.
But the high-tech simulator league still needs to iron out kinks, test new ideas and form an identity.
The biggest question TGL faced during its first month — outside of “what song will Tiger walk out to?” — was around the simulator technology, high-tech green and the integrity of both.
The Full Swing simulator drew some confused reactions from Woods, Max Homa and Kevin Kisner during their first TGL match. The green complex also has presented problems as pros have routinely been unable to keep from blowing 20-foot putts 4-6 feet past the hole.
But according to McIlroy, one of the league’s co-founders, the biggest issue with the gameplay is not the simulator screen or the green — it’s the bunkers.
“So in the arena, as the night goes on and say the humidity drops in there, they have to water the sand quite a lot to keep the moisture in it to keep it — so, like, they only get to water it before the game is played, but once we get in there, it starts to dry up,” McIlroy said Tuesday during his pre-tournament interview for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “So the bunker shot I hit last night, yeah, it felt like my club was going through flour instead of going through sand.
“Look, these are all the things that you learn on the fly. This is a startup. It’s four weeks old. We’ve had time to prepare and we’ve done everything we can, but it’s a learning process as we go along. I think each and every week, it’s got a little better. I obviously think last night was the best one so far. Hopefully, we just keep improving as we go on.”
McIlroy admitted he had some questions about the integrity of TGL’s technology, but a pre-match practice session eliminated his worries.
“Tech wise and numbers wise, I’ve had the same concerns, I guess, just from I hadn’t obviously played a match,” McIlroy said. “I went in there on Wednesday and I brought two other launch monitors with me. I brought my GC Quad, I brought my TrackMan. Obviously, hitting balls into the screen and every number was virtually identical. That put my concerns to bed, which was really good.”
Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy deliver TGL’s best night. Did they find formula for long-term success?
The four-time major champion acknowledged that it is an adjustment for pros to hit into a screen instead of at a live target, which could explain some of the wayward shots we’ve seen over the first month of TGL.
That can be solved if golfers trust that the technology will read the type of shot properly and the ball will react accordingly on the screen.
“I think the big thing for us is you’re hitting into a screen,” McIlroy said. “It’s obviously a big screen, but when you’re playing outside, you’ve got some sort of connection to the target, right? This is what we grew up doing. This is what we know. So when you get in there, it’s very difficult or hard to be, like, OK, I’m going to aim, you know, on the right half of the screen or the left half of the screen and trust that it’s actually going to do what you want it to do.
“Adam [Scott] was in there for the first time on Saturday, and I was there with him. I said you have to really try to treat this as if you’re playing outside because you hit it on that right half of the screen and try to hit a draw, like it will come back. If you hit a fade on the left side of the screen, it will come back. It’s just getting more reps in there to familiarize yourself and trust it, I think, is the big thing. And the more and more that we play in there, the more we’re going to get used to it and be comfortable.”
McIlroy’s Boston Common Golf will be back in action next Tuesday against Los Angeles Golf Club.
TGL will be on the back burner for the rest of the week, though, as McIlroy looks to help the PGA Tour come out of its sluggish start to the regular season with a good showing at the first Signature Event of the season. The Tour could use that juice just as much as the bunkers in TGL need moisture.