As the clock goes down straight launch of TGLprime time indoor golf televised league sponsored by Tiger Woods AND Rory McIlroykey components have fallen into place.
The six PGA Tour All-Star 4-player teams have been selected. The arena has been chosen (the custom-built Sofi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.). And two of the three architects of the course have been revealed: Nicklaus Design and Beau Welling Design; the third firm will be announced later this week.
What they are building is unlike anything the game has seen before.
TGL’s first-of-its-kind competition, which debuts Jan. 7 on ESPN, will follow a mixed-reality format, with players hitting long shots on virtual holes — hitting drives and zooms in on a giant simulator screen. – before hitting their chips and putts to and from an actual green. The green one, which can rotate 360 degrees and morph in its topography to create a dynamic challenge, is an impressive feat of engineering. The design of the virtual holes also took some work.
For this, TGL has commissioned its architectural partners to create 30 holes, 15 of which will be played on a rotating basis throughout the season.
Most of that work is now complete.
Earlier this week, Nicklaus Design, which has developed 439 courses in 46 countries and 40 states, gave GOLF.com a sneak peek at two of its TGL holes, along with insight into how they were created. One is a par 4 located in the Texas Hill Country. The next is a par 3 along the California coast.
“It’s the same, but different,” said Chad Goetz, senior designer at Nicklaus Design, when asked what it was like to transition from the real world to virtual design.
From the beginning, architects were given a lot of creative freedom and encouraged to dream up holes in different landscapes. The job, Goetz said, came with “opportunities and limitations.” On the one hand, they could let their imagination run wild, without the common concerns of design and construction.
“You can design anywhere you want without worrying about budgets or permits,” Goetz said.
On the other hand, there were logistical implications. Architects were asked, for example, to try to avoid designs that would leave midrange shots of around 30 to 70 yards, a sort of no-man’s land that would require players to hit balls lower on the TGL screen bigger than they otherwise. can be captured in the simulation.
“They’d almost have to hit it at the bottom of the screen to make it work, because they’re actually so far off the screen,” Goetz said. “So you’re going to see a lot of these holes, there’s kind of a penalty kick that eats up 30 to 70 yards because they don’t want to try to recreate that in the studio.”
Extreme elevation change was another no-no. Unlike the human eye, which can easily be moved to take up and down views, the on-screen camera in TGL will be fixed, unable to capture extreme ups and downs.
“One of our early designs was a mountain hole where we tried to push the limits,” Goetz said. “But we realized the specs weren’t going to work.”
Beyond these technical limitations, basic principles of good design apply, with the goal of creating compelling challenges and strategic options that would require smart decision-making under TGL’s 40 second shot clock.
Consider, for example, the Hill Country hole.
Nicknamed the “Bluebonnet,” it can play as either a driveable par-4 or a long two-putt, in a setting suitably filled with boulders and oaks. From the tee, competitors will face a carry of just over 300 yards to a green that can be positioned with a bank to the right. Balls that land on that bank will have a good chance of being confined to the putting surface. From the back tees, the hole turns into a cape hole, giving players a choice of how hard they want to try to bite with their drives.
The California par-3, called the “Cliffhanger,” also has built-in variety. Set on a coast, with cypress trees dotting its virtual landscape, it can play at a variety of lengths, reaching a maximum of 250 yards over an ocean inlet. If this makes you think of a certain famous par-3 on a certain famous course, you’re on to something. “You can definitely tell we’re taking a stab at 16 at Cypress Point,” Goetz said.
Nicklaus Design
Although designing a compelling par-3 was particularly challenging, “because it’s a shot, playing on the same green,” the wind, Goetz noted, will add to the intrigue.
“It will be an element in TGL,” he said. “I’ve been asking them to let it blow right on this hole and see if they can wind it 250 yards to a small green.”
As for getting the models from concept to reality, Goetz said the work followed familiar steps.
“I think we all agree that you can’t design directly on the computer, so we always start by hand drawing,” he said. From there, the drawings were digitized by Nicklaus Design’s production team and then handed off to TGL’s technology partner, Full Swing, who entered the designs into their modeling software, producing a simulated hole.
Nicklaus Design
“It was really interesting to watch him play because I can’t go out and feel him in the real world like I normally would,” Geotz said. “It’s this virtual thing. It seems like it should. But unless you physically have your eyes and feet on it, it’s hard to get a feel for how it’s going to play. It will be interesting to see how it works.”
To hear more from Goetz about designing for TGL, watch the video above.
