PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla.—TGL VP of competition technology and operations Scott Armstrong was thisclose to giving Tiger Woods advice on his golf game.

Woods recently visited the new golf arena ahead of the league’s Jan. 7 debut, eager to test every inch of the futuristic, football field-sized playing surface. Players will tee off from trucked-in palettes of natural grass cut into custom mats, swinging towards a 65-foot simulator screen, with advanced cameras tracking the ball in flight before representing it virtually on the screen. Thirty new holes have been created specifically to challenge golf’s best, each culminating in a real-world green area that swivels and oscillates to set up distinct surfaces. Teams of three golfers will play 15-hole matches in a mix of triples and singles formats.

Woods spent extra time in the short game area around that synthetic green, figuring out how the artificial grains played differently than the ones he’d won 82 official PGA Tour events and 15 major championships on top of. After watching Woods flub a couple chips, as Armstrong had seen previous visitors do, he opened his mouth only to see Tiger change the shape of his swing, sending a flop shot arcing into the air and landing inches from his target.  

“He was like, ‘OK, I got it,’” Armstrong recalled. “‘I’m just gonna go high.’”

Armstrong and other TGL execs have observed similar adjustments as 24 PGA Tour players set their own practice dates at the facility. That grain around the green has been particularly tricky, but golfers have also had to adjust to the overhead lighting that makes reading the green surface challenging.

Then there’s the 40-second shot clock forcing players to think more quickly than they otherwise might. A one-stroke penalty awaits those who can’t keep up.

“I’ve been caught out by the shot clock a couple of times already in practice,” Rory McIlroy said.

Ultimately though, the pros say learning TGL’s quirks is not unlike preparing for any new course on the calendar. And come gametime, TGL founder Mike McCarley expects the product to feel somewhat familiar to golf fans around the world. 

“I’ve talked to a lot of guys that are playing in TGL, and firstly, I think they’re blown away by the facility and the venue—it’s nothing like we’ve ever seen before, especially in golf,” McIlroy said. “It’s been quite the process. And I think the gameplay is going to be very realistic. The only thing I think that the players need to get dialed into is just the flow of the show.” 

Expectations are high for Woods, even though he hasn’t won a PGA Tour championship since 2019. The two-hour contests played within a condensed footprint should be more manageable for the 49-year-old who has now had six separate spine surgeries. TGL’s location 30 minutes south of Tiger’s Jupiter estate will make it easier for him to squeeze practice sessions into his schedule. Even the sand matches Woods’ backyard bunkers—as well as the traps at Augusta National, where Tiger has claimed five green jackets. 

But TGL wasn’t built for Tiger—at least not as a player.

When McCarley first pitched the concept five years ago, he told Tiger he could take any position he wanted—a team owner, a captain, a GM. Woods wanted to play.

“I remember he said … ‘This is going to feed my competitive juices,’” McCarley said. “He can still hit all those same shots. We’ve seen him in here doing some pretty crazy things.”

Woods and McIlroy helped launch TGL as co-founders of league operator TMRW Sports.

But other players are determined to keep TGL from becoming the Tiger Golf League. Justin Rose grilled Armstrong on the exact topography of TGL’s greens, looking for literal edges. Min Woo Lee impressed employees by recognizing each swing’s metrics before TGL’s systems could even spit them out, and by spinning short shots all over the turf. McIlroy brought his own launch monitors to test the in-house calibration tools.

Soon enough, players will be plenty comfortable with the TGL course’s idiosyncrasies. But Billy Horschel thinks it will be everything surrounding the shots that separates the team competition from PGA Tour events. Players will be mic’d up for TV and encouraged to banter with each other. Fans will be feet from the action in SoFi Center’s horseshoe stands. Lights and cameras will spotlight the stars. They’ll be rewarded for taking preposterous holes seriously, but also for having fun along the way.

“I think the team that does the best is the team that enjoys it the most, embraces what it is, getting the fans involved, being entertainers,” Horschel said. “I think those are the guys that will do the best.”