Even as a golf fan, Tiger Woods' TGL is an acquired taste I haven't acquired

Even as a golf fan, Tiger Woods’ TGL is an acquired taste I haven’t acquired

Posted by author January 22, 2025 Golf

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I love sports, and I’ve often wondered if I would watch any sporting event, no matter how trivial, if a network bothered to put it on TV.

I have finally found one that puts this question to the test. Welcome to Tomorrow’s Golf League, or TGL. I finally caught up with the most recent match this week (play began Jan. 7). It is, in its way, innovative sports TV. It is also surpassingly weird.

TGL is a golf league founded by Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and former NBC Sports executive Mike McCarley. You’ve likely never heard of McCarley. If you are a golf fan you know McIlroy. If you have been alive for the last 25 years, you know Tiger. (Sorry, “Woods” just doesn’t cut it.)

Tiger Woods is one of the founders of TGL

The point is, these aren’t nobodies. Tiger is the biggest somebody in golf, arguably the best player ever, without question at least the second-best ever, even if he’s no longer competitive. (Google him, if you aren’t familiar with the highs and lows.) Just having his name attached to a fledging league makes it notable.

The quirk here is that it is indoor golf. There are teams, and they compete at SoFi Stadium at Palm Beach State College, in front of a cheering crowd — think the 16th hole of the Phoenix Open if by some miracle rain had thinned the crowd down to 1,500 people. (Also: from the sound of it, less drunk.)

No, it’s not played in some huge airplane hangar. Players tee off into a huge screen, five stories tall — basically a top-of-the-line golf simulator. On long holes they hit their second shot virtually, as well. The mix of real life and what’s basically a video game sounds like a golf version of “Tron.” It is not that.

Once they get close enough, players chip and putt onto a real green (there are sand traps with real sand), which is a technological marvel. More than 600 hydraulic jacks change the undulation of the green depending on the hole. That’s undeniably cool.

So is probably the best thing about the competition, putting microphones on the players so we can hear them chat, yell, talk trash, whatever.

But why, you may ask, would I watch a show in which golfers, even those among the best in the world, hit balls into a giant screen? The same reason George Mallory gave for climbing Mt. Everest: because it is there.

I get it. You have to really like golf to watch it on TV. I do, and pass no judgement on anyone who does or doesn’t. But you have to be obsessed with it to watch this.

A problem so far is that the matches haven’t been competitive. In the one I watched Tuesday, Atlanta beat New York 4-0. That’s by far the closest match so far. (I will not bore you with too much of the format, which involves singles and triples and a gimmick called “The Hammer” which basically doubles the value of a hole.

Justin Thomas has TV experience from Netflix’s ‘Full Swing’

There is a definite golf-bro vibe to the whole thing, which starts with host Matt Barrie (an Arizona State alum) and is personified in course reporter Marty Smith; he should probably refrain from calling players “bro” and “son” when talking to them, but the boy’s-club attitude probably appeals to a lot of golf fans. I could do without it.

That said, I enjoyed the sloppiness. Golf too often is treated as some kind of spiritual quest. CBS treats the Master’s like a religious experience. The great Dave Barry once described the atmosphere on a course: “Nobody was making a peep, because putting is an extremely difficult and highly technical activity that — unlike, for example, brain surgery — must be performed in absolute silence.”

You’d think Justin Thomas, who plays (is that the right word? Who knows?) for Atlanta, would be the most interesting player in Tuesday’s match. His experience on Netflix’s “Full Swing” no doubt makes him realize the value of a strong personality on TV. But his teammate Billy Horschel was the real star, donning an Atlanta Falcons’ Dirty Bird chain — and doing the accompanying dance a few times.

Who played better? Who cares? This isn’t that kind of show. And show is what it is — a clearly made-for-TV event meant to appeal to golf fans who get antsy waiting for the PGA Tour to start. That’s who it’s aimed at and for them, it probably delivers. For everyone else, it’s a curiosity at best.