The TGL fan experience was not for me. But it might be for you

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – You want to see Tiger Woods in action for the first time this year? Tune in to ESPN on Tuesdays at 7:00 PM Eastern for Week 4 of Season 2 for DATE golf, the made-for-TV indoor golf league at night.

Woods isn’t playing, his club is. Connections of Jupiteris in action, opposite the New York Golf Club. (Woods is the owner-operator of the Jupiter team.) You’ll get a chance to see Woods walk back and forth from the rolling green at one end of the fairway to the driving range at midrange. SoFi Centeroff PGA Boulevard, the Main Street of the modern PGA Tour.

Or maybe you’re close. (Six million people live in South Florida, plus visitors.) Want to see all this action live? As of Tuesday morning, good tickets were still available for today’s contest, starting at $250, through Ticketmaster.

Last Tuesday, I went to see TGL in the first week of this new year. Looking for the fan experience, I bought the least expensive ticket available, $189, including (for the fine print) miscellaneous fees. But not all different fees. I inadvertently went first to the valet, where the parking fee was $80, and from there to the self parking, where the fee was $30. The SoFi Center is on the campus of Palm Beach State College.

I asked the parking attendant if there was another place where I could park for free and enter from there. There wasn’t. “If it makes you feel better, last year parking here was $40.” Are falling parking fees some sort of economic indicator? Judging by the cars nearby, even in self-parking, and the sharp looks of people getting out of them, no one was too worried about $10 here, $10 there. When I made small talk with the twenty-year-old ticket holder who got out of a car parked next to me, he recounted various details about the golf courses at Apogee, a new development about 20 miles north of here that has three courses and a short course. “It’s killer,” my neighbor told me in the parking lot.

The SoFi Center was clean, a little damp, kind of dead, with limited food—a soft pretzel for $8, burgers and veggie burgers for $14—and all kinds of top-shelf booze. The arena can hold about 1,500 people and there were hundreds of empty seats. The two teams that competed in the season opener were the Atlanta team playing the Bay team, representing greater San Francisco. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I’ve seen a few TGLs on TV, but never really understood what I was watching. I don’t hit balls in a simulator. I’ve never been to one Top golf. I’m not the demographic TGL is going for here. I went to ABA basketball games as a kid and loved it. The red, white and blue ball, Dr. J flying through the air with it.

Back then, we didn’t have headphones. At the SoFi Center, you’re given a pair, ostensibly a gift of your patronage, though you have to provide some information to get them working. I spent about 20 minutes charging mine and connecting them to my cell phone. In the 21st minute, I gave up. I could listen to play-by-play commentary and play-to-player chat via dedicated channels available on my phone. Among all the other ambient sounds, I didn’t get much.

I spent a lot of time looking Billy Horschela lifelong Floridian and former Gator golfer who is on the Atlanta team. He always seemed to be doing something and doing it with energy. I saw him hit an iron on the giant screen to an electronic hole that I couldn’t work out, but the swing looked good. Horschel must have felt the same. The moment his shot was airborne and connected to the screen, he somehow knew he had nailed it. It must be beautiful. There are no winds to worry about at the SoFi Center. He was within 10 meters. Before long, it was time to change directions and march onto the rolling green. It’s mind-blowing.

Above, from the roof of the SoFi Center, there are many flashing lights. Booming music (good sound system!) is a constant, unless the public address speaker was offering some sort of insight into the action below, including the ever-present question of whether one team or the others would “drop the hammer.” For the thousands or more fans on hand, plus the hundreds of thousands watching on ESPN and its family of broadcasters, it was, it seems, a kind of mild preoccupation.

You can read all about hammer throwin TGL style, on the TGL website, and I did. Looking at your phone while participating in this two-hour, 15-hole TGL event is very normal. The hammer throw is a strategic tool by which a team can increase the value of any single hole from one point to two. There’s more to it than that, but this at least gets you started.

The hammer itself is not a hammer at all. Horschel had his in his left back pocket, where it looked almost like a hand mop sometimes carried by Sunday duffers to keep clubs and golf balls clean. But you can throw the hammer in style. The players, by the way, where the team uniforms adorned with their usual ones, provided individual endorsements. Patrick Cantlay, also on the Atlanta squad, had Delta stenciled on the chest of his shirt, Cisco on his sleeve and Apollo on his hat.

Lexi Thompson was in the house as was LPGA commissioner Craig Kessler. A women’s TGL league is coming later this year. Brian RolappThe CEO of the PGA Tour was in the house. Rolapp and his fellow Tour executives have a vested interest in TGL’s success because part ownership of a TGL team could prove to be another recruiting tool to keep star players on the PGA Tour and out of LIV. Woods owns the league and owns the Jupiter team. Rory McIlroy is also an owner of the league, and of the Boston team, which is owned by Fenway Sports Group, where he has business ties.

At the end of nine holes, the score was Atlanta 4, Bay 3. I can’t say I cared, but I was a little curious to see how the last five holes would play out. I walked out into the wide, deserted fairway, pulled into a short lane to play a single shot on a PGA-sponsored simulator, hit a poor putt with a 7-iron into a virtual ocean for my first swing of the new year, and returned to the arena.

Sometime around this time, “Good Vibrations,” the old Marky Mark hit, thundered through the SoFi Center. Chris Gotterup, a fill-in player for Atlanta, made a bunker shot. I think someone dropped a hammer before playing the shot, but I can’t say for sure. The final score was Atlanta Drive Golf Club 7, Bay Golf Club 4. I can’t think of a sports league where the founding principle was making money for the team and league owners, but maybe TGL will be the exception.

Don’t go near me. When Topgolf was first explained to me, before the first tee, I thought, “Sounds like a glorified range.” I thought the same thing about driverless cars. On my way to park myself, I saw, for the first time in my life, a driverless car in action. Its owner, it seems, had found a way to get all the benefits of valet parking without having to pay an extra $40.

Back then, ABA basketball was child’s entertainment for young basketball fans. Serious basketball was played at The Garden, by the Knicks. Knicks vs. Celtics. Knicks vs. Sixers. Knicks vs. Lakers. Maybe Jupiter vs. New York will one day have that kind of ring to it. Maybe one day there will be a movie about TGL golf like there is about rollerball. Maybe this will all play out in a glorious way that I can’t see. People need entertainment, and TGL is here to provide it. Fun is like anything else. It is in the eye of the beholder. I’d rather watch a playoff from a Monday four-point game to get a spot in a Tour event. But that’s just me.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com