TGL is different. But to thrive, it will need this 1 essential ingredient
Bay GC, in green, cruised in TGL's debut match Tuesday night.
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After watching TGL’s opening night, here’s a burning question for ya: Do you need more golf on a screen in your life?
And by screen, we’re not fussy. All screens are welcome here. The UHD screen in your personcave with its 65-inch wingspan. The screen on your iPhone 16, not even three inches wide. Something in between. But the question for you is do you want more golf on a screen? You have your answer and I have mine. The SoFi Center in South Florida, the venue for these prime-time indoor golf competitions, holds 1,500 people. (SoFi Stadium, a Southern California football temple, seats 70,000.) This golf play is not about bums in seats. It’s about eyes on screens.
I couldn’t look away. Not because the golf was captivating. But because we got to see some familiar people in unfamiliar settings. Tiger Woods, offering some color commentary on a league he part owns. Tiger Woods, selling.
Yes, Woods has appeared in TV commercials for nearly 30 years. But he wasn’t selling. He was saying you can drive the car I drive, wear the watch I wear, carry the credit card I carry. Now he needs us. Do we want this high-tech golf-ish thing? He seemed nervous. I cite that as a positive. Has any of us ever done anything audacious and not felt nervous about it?
It’s wildly inventive. Anybody would say that. It was all new. Two three-man teams playing indoor golf on a Tuesday night when most of the country was in a deep freeze. There’s never been anything like it.
On that basis, there’s nothing to compare it to. Every tee shot looked like it was going to sail right off the screen like a slicing 50-yard field goal attempt. But, through the miracle of its own technology, the next thing you saw was a golf ball flying 290 yards and landing on a fairway at the Fantasy Island Golf & Country Club or some other course on an island that looks like Tahiti.
In time, these shiny new toys will become old, or at least familiar, and all that will be left is the actual competition. If anybody cares about the actual competition will depend on how much the players actually care. That’s what made Tiger at the Masters so compelling. Jack Nicklaus at a U.S. Open and Seve Ballesteros at a British Open, the same. They cared. More than cared. The fundamental problem with LIV Golf is (maybe I should speak for myself) . . . people don’t care about what actually happens. Not in large numbers. You can’t trick us into caring. Ratings will tell all. That’s why Tiger was trying so hard Tuesday night.
There can be only one opening night for a new anything. Everywhere you looked on your screen, there was something new to see. Indoor divots with real grass. A tick-tick-boom shot clock. Golf’s first indoor PA announcer, Roger Steele, calling the players to the plate with a bellow that brought to mind Oprah Winfrey. (ZANNNN-drrrrr SHOFFF-lay!) Any single TGL drive, by Xander Schauffele or anybody else, makes Alan Shepherd’s 6-iron on the moon look like child’s play.
It was easy to find. I was nervous, because the things I want to watch on TV these days are usually crazily difficult to locate, between Showtime and Netflix and Amazon Prime and Disney+ just for the Beatles documentary. By way of Tuesday-night party prep, I typed this question on my answer machine: How to watch TGL golf. The first hit took me to an ESPN website.
The TGL’s first broadcast gave us a genius innovation … AND a sugar high
On the right side of the website’s first page there were large, expressive action shots of a bearded Scottie Scheffler, a semi-bearded Xander Schauffele and a stubbled Rory McIlroy. On the left side was a call-to-action click button to get ESPN+ for $11.99 per month. I feared coming up with yet another UN/PW one-two punch, plus the three-digit thing on the back of my credit card. Turns out, all you have to do is turn on your TV to ESPN. Duke’s rout of Pittsburgh ended, and there was Scott Van Pelt’s familiar mug in studio, going deep with Rickie Fowler of the New York club, at the SoFi Center. Nobody in golf does casual better than Rick.
Shane Lowry looked like a wreck, and that was cool, too. He’s the big stick of the Bay Golf Club, a virtual San Francisco team. (None of its players actually lives in San Francisco, although one of the team owners, Steph Curry, works there.) Steele, the arena’s barker, called for Lowry to step in for the league’s first-ever shot. The Irishman got to the tee box with his driver and a ball and then realized he did not have a peg. And all the while, the shot clock was ticking. I could feel his jangly nerves right through our home Hitachi screen here in Philadelphia, 1,100 miles away from the indoor excitement at SoFi Center, off of PGA Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens, the main street of the modern PGA Tour. It’s a healthy thing, to get out of your comfort zone. Almost every winner of a major championship says that. Most of them have lost a major down the stretch before they win one.
Many people in golf are trying to figure out how to bring the thrill-a-minute aspect of golf’s best team event, the Ryder Cup, to other golf events. LIV Golf is trying to do that, the PGA Tour is trying to do that, amateur golf is trying to do that, TGL golf is trying to do that. The key word in the phrase team golf is the first one. I don’t know if you can go into a conference room and come out with six four-man teams, but that’s pretty much what TGL has done here. Well, you have to start somewhere. The NHL was once a new league with six teams, too. (Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, New York and Toronto). TGL’s original six teams represent five American cities and one town: Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco — and Jupiter, Fla.
Did you ever hear an explanation of what TGL stands for? I did not. Originally, I thought it was for Tuesdaynight Golf League (I have since learned that some of the matches also will be played on Mondays). Which brings to mind Sheryl Crow’s first album, Tuesday Night Music Club, and its big hit, All I Want to Do. You may recall the preamble:
This ain’t no disco.
It ain’t no country club, either.
This is L.A.
She could have been talking about TGL. South Florida went L.A. for a night. That’s how it seemed on our TV. There’s a fine line here. If 007 took himself too seriously, there would never have been a movie called Octopussy. TGL, the same. But neither can it appear to be a joke.
Per Wikipedia, TGL stands for Tomorrow’s Golf League, although the league itself, according to a thorough investigation by my colleague Dylan Dethier, says TGL stands only for . . . TGL.
Still, you couldn’t fault fans for assuming the acronym stands for something else: Tiger’s Golf League. Tiger does own the PIP voting. (Player Impact Program.) He is on a first-name basis with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the PIF, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, bankers to LIV (as in the Roman numerals for 54) Golf. You maybe know that Tiger has won the API (Arnold Palmer Invitational) eight times.
Woods is one of the founders of TGL, along with Rory McIlroy and Mike McCarley, a former president of Golf Channel. (AP was the GC’s OG.) That threesome — McCarley, McIroy and Woods — has a company called TMRW Sports, which is pronounced tomorrow. (Tiger’s business life is conducted as TGR Ventures.) There are no LIV golfers playing TGL golf. That is not a coincidence. TGL is owned in part by the PGA Tour. TGL has helped keep Woods and McIlroy in the PGA Tour fold. There’s a lot going on here, a lot at stake. Of course Tiger was nervous. Jay Monahan was nervous, too.
There was a story on The Athletic’s website Tuesday that explained how TGL works. At the bottom of the article, there was a place for reader comments and the first person to post typed this:
sure, why not
“A little casual,” John McEnroe, an owner of the New York TGL team, said a couple summers ago, when an ESPN camera at Wimbledon panned by an overweight fan in a tight T-shirt.
sure, why not
A little casual but a useful way into this bold, complicated, semi-ridiculous, made-for-TV golfing entertainment.
The star of the night was DJ Khaled, the larger-than-life record producer and golf nut. In a standup interview midway through the show, he talked about what he liked about golf. “It’s like life,” he said. “It ain’t easy but it’s beautiful.” The beholder decides what beauty is. We all know that. We decide what golf is, too.
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