An informal social media poll provided a general hell yes. Social media loves Tiger Woods. Add a red shirt, a red tunnel and some dramatic fog? The combo can’t be missed.
A tougher student sat in the front row inside the SoFi Center Tuesday night. How would Tiger’s son Charlie mark the entrance of his father, who was carrying a Sprite along with some friends? four out of 10, he told ESPN’s Marty Smith. Oh.
But perhaps the only relevant perspective came from Woods himself, who couldn’t stop laughing in the moments after appearing in Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” which went down. the hammer and laced opening tee shot in the center?
“That was it wonderful“, he said. “That was the best.”
It’s all an optimistic mix of past, present and future, this TGL effort. Woods embodies that. He’s 49 years old and it’s been half a decade since he’s played in a PGA Tour event, but he’s still the sport’s biggest draw, and this league was built with his talent and vibe in mind. There’s no shortage of nostalgia in this league’s DNA, then, even as it tries to push the sport into the future. T in TGL stands for (unofficially, as it turns out) for Tomorrow. It was fitting that Woods debuted Tomorrow’s Golf League on Yesterday’s Music. “Eye of the Tiger” was released in 1982, 27 years before Charlie was born. It was a bit on the nose. That didn’t really matter.
Before long, Tuesday’s contest turned into a frenzy. For the team in red, an early deficit turned into a big blow. You know the phrase “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry?” In the end Woods did both.
But the big picture, Week 2 of TGL left us with three burning questions.
1. What’s going on with the Tiger team?
Look, it’s going to take some time for any team to get their bearings in a brand new arena playing what is at least a semi-new sport. But Jupiter Links Golf Club, composed on this night of Woods, Max Homa and Kevin Kisner, was bad. like, bad bad. Los Angeles Golf Club – Justin Rose, Sahith Theegala and Collin Morikawa – defeated them, 12-1.
“We had fun,” Woods said after the round. “We hit a lot of shots. I think people here, they should see how bad professionals they can be. It was just a boat race.”
Kisner seemed particularly unprepared for the effort. The long-time fan-favorite Tour pro is a delight on every broadcast he joins — and will be doing it full time going forward – but the TGL is a bomber league and his performance off the tee told an unfortunate story. He hit just one of three fairways and averaged just 159.6 mph with driver, 12 mph behind the next slowest.
But Woods, who looked healthy and showed plenty of speed, nevertheless offered an open self-assessment.
“It’s not about walking,” he said. “It’s just that my game isn’t very good.”
If there’s hope for Jupiter, it’s that Woods will understand the screen, Homa will be a reliable presence and they can draw energy from the arrival of Tom Kim, their fourth teammate, who is known for turning on the underdogs. in team matches.
“We called Tom and asked him to fly here, live in this thing for a while,” Homa said.
“What is (Tom) thinking now? Woods asked. “Oh my God.”
Anyone who has ever played golf knows how hard it is to stay happy when playing bad golf. It was a gift, then, that Kisner produced the night’s most memorable moment on the 14th hole when he hit a bunker away from the pin, sending his teammates for cover – and then into hysterics.
“We honestly didn’t think anyone could get hit here,” Woods said; if the ball hadn’t hit the post, it would have ended up in the stands. “But that was one of the funniest moments I’ve ever seen, Kiz hitting it that way. We were just dying.”
2. What happened to the simulators?
If you’re on this website reading about a simulator golf league, chances are you’ve played golf in some sort of simulator. And if you’ve played golf in a simulator, you know that the most frustrating part is how the ball reacts a little differently than it does in real life. (Or at least it seems to—there’s, of course, no way to know in real time, which only adds to the frustration.) What would be a soft cut in real life can turn into a long left pull. . What should have carried 105 somehow carries 90, or vice versa. That’s all well and good if you’re cornered at a local bowling alley with three friends and two pitchers. But when you’re on ESPN asking people to consider betting real-life money on this thing? There’s a little more pressure on technology to cooperate.
Honestly, TGL’s technology is mostly good, from the spinning green to the little spotlight that tells players where to put the ball. But at a very basic level, the league needs to keep its distance to be really, really believable, and the front ground where they were hitting wedges seemed off. Woods sent a wedge screaming over 20 feet over the green and into the water. Morikawa and Kisner also seemed confused at various points.
“I know from the front tee box that we hit every shot long,” Woods said.
“Significantly long,” added Homa.
Players were wary of overt criticism on the air, but something was clear. Whether the cameras weren’t capturing the spin properly or, well, I have no idea. This is all outside my skill set. Hopefully it’s not beyond them. Trust in technology is the foundation of the whole thing.
3. What will it look like if we have a close match?
Two weeks later, we also have two strikes. That’s a nightmare scenario for a league that promises a fast-paced, action-packed two hours of golf. On the bright side, though: we still don’t know what a close match looks like!
We’ve learned from the various iterations of The Match over the years that it’s basically impossible to save a putt golf match. The tension breaks and so do the jokes and the whole thing starts to feel a little ridiculous. But TGL in a tight matchup still looks like it could be a lot of fun. Dropping hammers on high-pressure shots? Tracking down an important tee shot as it flies over a massive pit of digital lava? A real, actual tension between some of the most competitive and highest-achieving players on the planet? I’m willing to see how it looks.
Maybe next week.
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Dylan Dethier
Editor of Golf.com
Dylan Dethier is a senior writer for GOLF Magazine/GOLF.com. Resident of Williamstown, Mass. joined GOLF in 2017 after two years of struggling on the mini-tours. Dethier is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in English, and he is the author of 18 in Americawhich details the year he spent as an 18-year-old living out of his car and golfing in every state.
