Bay GC, in green, sailed into TGL’s debut match on Tuesday night.
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After watching TGL opening nightHere’s a burning question for you: Do you need more golf on a screen in your life?
And from the screen, we are not worried. All screens are welcome here. UHD screen in your personal cave with 65 inch wingspan. The screen on your iPhone 16, not even three inches wide. Something in between. But the question about you Do you want more golf on your screen? You have your answer and I have mine. The SoFi Center in South Florida, the site of these prime-time golf tournaments, holds 1,500 people. (SoFi Stadium, a soccer temple in Southern California, seats 70,000.) This game of golf is not about sitting in the seats. It’s about the eyes on the screen.
I couldn’t look away. Not because golf was glamorous. But because we have seen some familiar people in unfamiliar surroundings. Tiger Woodsproviding some color commentary on a league he owns. Tiger Woods for sale.
Yes, Woods has appeared in television commercials for nearly 30 years. But he wasn’t selling. He said you can drive the car I drive, wear the watch I wear, carry the credit card I carry. now it NEEDS in. Do we love this high-tech golf thing? He looked nervous. I mention it as positive. Have any of us done anything brave and not felt nervous about it?
It is extremely inventive. Anyone would say that. It was all new. Two teams of three playing indoor golf on a Tuesday night when much of the country was in a deep freeze. There has never been anything like it.
On this basis, there is nothing to compare it to. Every tee shot looked like it would sail right off the screen like a 50-yard field goal attempt. But through the miracle of own technologythe next thing you saw was a golf ball flying 290 yards and landing on a fairway at Fantasy Island Golf & Country Club or some other course on an island that looks like Tahiti.
Over time, these shiny new toys will become old, or at least familiar, and all that will be left is the actual competition. Whether one 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 in a US Open and Seve Ballesteros in a British Open, same thing. They cared. More that he 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. The ratings will tell all. That’s why Tiger was trying so hard Tuesday night.
There can only be one opening night for a new thing. Everywhere you looked on your screen, there was something new to see. Interior partitions with real grass. A tick-tock-boom shot clock. Golf’s first indoor PA announcer, Roger Steele, calling players to the plate with a whistle that brought Oprah Winfrey to mind. (ZANNNN-drrrrr SHOFFF-lay!) Every single TGL drive, by Xander Schauffele or anyone else, makes Alan Shepherd’s 6-iron to the moon look like child’s play.
it it Was easy to find. I was nervous because the things I want to watch on TV these days are usually extremely hard to find, between Showtime and Netflix and Amazon Prime and Disney+ just for the Beatles documentary. In preparation for Tuesday night’s party, I typed this question into my answering machine: How to watch TGL golf. The first hit took me to an ESPN website.
The first broadcast of TGL gave us a genius innovation … AND a sugar high
On the right side of the website’s front page were large, expressive images of a bearded Scottie Scheffler, a half-bearded Xander Schauffele and a stubbled Rory McIlroy. On the left side was a call to action button to get ESPN+ for $11.99 a month. I was afraid I’d come down with 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 the TV to ESPN. Duke of Pittsburgh’s clash ended and there was Scott Van Pelt’s famous studio tour, going deep with New York’s Rickie Fowler at the SoFi Center. No one in golf does casual better than Rick.
Shane Lowry looked like a wreck, and that was great too. He is the golf club of the Bay Golf Club, a virtual team of San Francisco. (None of its players actually live in San Francisco, although one of the team’s owners, Steph Curry, works there.) Steele, the arena belly, called on Lowry to step in for the league’s first touchdown. . The Irishman reached the tee box with his driver and a ball and then realized he was missing a pin. And all the while, the shot clock was ticking. i could feel it his dull nerves straight to our Hitachi home screen here in Philadelphia, 1,100 miles away from the indoor thrills at SoFi Center, off PGA Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens, the main thoroughfare of the modern PGA Tour. It’s a healthy thing to step out of your comfort zone. Almost every major championship winner says that. Most of them have lost a great deal before gaining one.
Many people in golf are trying to figure out how to bring the exciting up-to-the-minute aspect of golf’s best team event, the Ryder Cup, to other golf events. LIV Golf is trying to do this, PGA Tour is trying to do this, amateur golf is trying to do this, TGL golf is trying to do this. Key word in the phrase team golf is the first. I don’t know if you can go into a boardroom and come up with six teams of four players, but that’s pretty much what TGL has done here. Well, you have to start somewhere. The NHL was once a fledgling six-team league as well. (Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, New York and Toronto). The six original TGL teams represent five US cities and one city: Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco – and Jupiter, Fla.
Have you ever heard an explanation of what TGL stands for? I haven’t done it. At first, I thought it was for the Tuesday Night Golf League (I have since learned that some of the matches will also be played on Mondays). Which brings to mind Sheryl Crow’s first album, Tuesday Night Music Cluband his big hit, All I want to do. You may recall the preamble:
This is not disco.
It’s not even a country club.
This is LA
She could have been talking about TGL. South Florida went to LA for a night. This is what it looked like on our TV. There is a fine line here. If 007 took himself too seriously, there would never have been a movie named after him Octopus. TGL, same thing. But it can’t seem like a joke either.
for Wikipedia, TGL stands for The Golf League of Tomorrow, although the league itself, according to a full investigation by my colleague Dylan Dethier, says that TGL stands for . . . TGL.
Still, you can’t blame fans for assuming the acronym stands for something else: Tiger Golf League. Tiger yes own the PIP vote. (Player Impact Program.) He is on a first name basis with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of PIF, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, bankers at LIV (as in Roman numerals for 54) Golf. You probably know that Tiger has won the API (Arnold Palmer Invitational) eight times.
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Woods is one of the founders of TGL, along with Rory McIlroy and Mike McCarley, a former president of the Golf Channel. (AP was the OG of GC.) That trio — McCarley, McIroy and Woods — has a company called TMRW Sports, which is highlighted tomorrow. (Tiger’s business life is conducted as TGR Ventures.) There are no LIV golfers playing TGL golf. This is no coincidence. TGL is partially owned by the PGA Tour. TGL has helped keep Woods and McIlroy in the PGA Tour group. There’s a lot going on here, a lot at stake. from COURSE The tiger was nervous. Jay Monahan was also nervous.
There was a story AthleticsTuesday’s website that explained how TGL works. At the end of the article, there was a place for reader comments, and the first person to post wrote this:
sure, why not
“A bit random,” said John McEnroe, an owner of the New York TGL team, a few summers ago when an ESPN camera at Wimbledon was jumped by an overweight fan in a tight T-shirt.
sure, why not
A little random, but a useful way in this bold, complicated, semi-funny, made-for-TV golf fun.
The star of the night was DJ Khaled, the larger than life producer and golf nut. In a mid-show standup interview, he talked about what he loves about golf. “It’s like life,” he said. “It’s not easy, but it’s beautiful.” The beholder decides what beauty is. We all know that. We also decide what golf is.
