Tiger Woods is swinging in the TGL simulator.
TGL presented by SoFi
The technology that powers TGL, indoor golf league founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sportsit’s amazing.
The 3,392-square-foot simulator screen on which players will hit is 24 times larger than screens you might find at, say, Dick’s Sporting Goods. The images will be tracked by 18 Full Swing radar devices and eight Top Tracer optical cameras, each built to calculate with incredible precision the path, roll and trajectory of a golf ball traveling 170 mph or faster. The green, which players will hit when facing short shots of 50 yards or less, sits on a 41-yard tee; beneath it are 567 hydraulic jacks that can create peaks and valleys on every inch of the seating surface.
“There’s so much technology,” Mike McCarley, CEO of TMRW Sports Group, TGL’s parent company, said at a media event last month. “Bigger and better than I could have ever imagined.”
TGLs $50 million arena in West Palm Beach, Fla., is truly unlike anything the game has ever seen, and it will be fascinating to watch it come to life when the league debuts on Tuesday. But all that splashy technology also raises a question: What happens if it doesn’t work?
We’re not talking about a doomsday scenario here, in which, say, the mainframe of the simulator crashes or a Cameron Young rocket hits the screen – but more, what if a smaller-scale glitch interrupts gameplay or threatens competitive integrity? Because if you’ve ever played a golf simulator, you know that technology is imperfect. Firing data at any given swing may be inaccurate. Shots may fail to register at all. REALLY bad shots can completely miss the screen (okay, that’s more due to human error). Who knows, the car might even reset after a player has contacted.
Impossible situations? No doubt. But if we’ve learned anything from the traditional version of this crazy sport, let alone one that relies on tens of millions of dollars worth of largely untested technology, tougher situations can and do happen.
TGL knows this, which is why the league’s official rules include procedures for “incorrect counts” and “unrecorded hits.”
The league hasn’t released all of its competition rules yet, but it shared with GOLF.com how technology issues will be fixed — and in short, yes, if something goes wrong and a shot isn’t recorded accurately, it can be reproduced. But as always with the rules of golf, the specifics are nuanced.
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Here, in italics, is how that section of the TGL rulebook reads:
The referee or booth official must have the ability to consider a shot during the script as an “incorrect count” at their discretion to maintain the integrity of the match and facilitate the contest. They will also have the authority to consider a “re-strike”. Scenarios where this may occur include, but are not limited to, the following:
