Editor’s note: “In Case You Missed It” is a GGP+ feature that highlights a story from Global Golf Post‘s Monday magazine.
Mike McCarley remembers the day about four years ago when he spent 90 minutes talking with Tiger Woods about the vision for TGL, the new live prime-time team golf event that will debut January 7 on ESPN, while understanding the importance of having the game’s most influential figure not just give his blessing but to be a part of the potentially revolutionary new league.
“He looked at me and said, ‘If I commit to doing this, will you commit to doing it too?’” said McCarley, who spent a decade as president of Golf Channel during a long career in television.
McCarley was all in. Within a few weeks, Rory McIlroy had joined the team, setting off a frontier-expanding endeavor that is intended to broaden the game’s growing footprint with traditional and non-traditional fans.
“Imagine launching a basketball league today with LeBron James and Steph Curry,” McCarley said during an interview last week.
“For the last 25 years, Tiger has been the driver of golf on television and has allowed for the sport to reach new heights and has allowed for a lot of the current top players in the world to be seen by more people because of the stage that Tiger built. This is another stage that allows the sport to be seen by new and different groups of people and to appeal to them in new and different ways.”
As the PGA Tour season winds down, the ramp-up for TGL’s debut is increasing. At the Zozo Championship in Japan last week, marketing included an element for the Boston Common team that features Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, similar to what the Atlanta Drive had at the Tour Championship at East Lake.
McCarley said TGL displays are available in PGA Tour Superstores nationwide, part of a campaign to introduce the new league to fans. The week before the first match airs at 9 p.m. EST, there will be 15 football games across the ESPN networks, and the push to drive viewers to golf’s newest thing will be in full force.
To anyone not familiar with TGL, it is a made-for-television golf league, with six teams composed of 24 of the PGA Tour’s top players competing in a two-month schedule of matches in a 1,500-seat arena specifically built for the competition. The SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, will feature a massive 3,000-square-foot simulator screen and a short-game complex with an adjustable green.
Every player will be mic’d up during the matches, which will be played during a two-hour television window. State-of-the-art graphics and data will be available to the audience throughout the competition, which will have various wrinkles including alternate-shot and head-to-head singles competition.
The most interesting part is likely to be hearing the players talk through shots together, discussing strategy and options on virtual holes designed to test the game’s best players. While there is sure to be some back and forth between the teams, the conversation is likely to be more organic than the banter that often comes across as awkward and forced in many made-for-TV matches.
“I like to think we try to have one foot firmly planted in the traditions of the game, and with the other foot we’re really trying to take a big step into the future.” – Mike McCarley
It’s new and edgy, intent on capturing both the traditional golf fan and capitalizing on the demographic that has been introduced to the game through Topgolf and other non-traditional concepts.
Will it be for everyone? Probably not, but this has been patiently plotted. Its investor list includes everyone from basketball’s Steph Curry and Shaquille O’Neal to auto racing’s Lewis Hamilton and tennis’ Serena Williams, and a changing sport is about to add a different look this winter.
“I like to think we try to have one foot firmly planted in the traditions of the game, and with the other foot we’re really trying to take a big step into the future,” said McCarley, who is CEO and founder of TMRW Sports, which operates TGL with co-founders Woods and McIlroy.
“When [then-CEO] Martin Slumbers invited me to come speak when the R&A brought all of their federations together and rolled this out to them two years ago at St. Andrews, it was meaningful in that a body like the R&A was embracing a concept like this.
“Everyone is realizing in the game, non-traditional play, off a traditional golf course, is continuing to outpace play on a traditional golf course, and it is leading to more people picking up the more traditional game. Now we’re creating a modern media experience that matches the forms of golf that they have been introduced to.”
In his years as a TV executive at NBC Sports and Golf Channel, McCarley is familiar with finding ways to maximize viewership, whether it was for lower-profile Olympic sports or with “Sunday Night Football.”
Sensing an opportunity for golf to innovate and believing Monday and Tuesday evenings in the winter offer potentially lucrative viewing windows, McCarley and his group have worked with the PGA Tour and commissioner Jay Monahan to create the new venture without taking away from the traditional tour schedule.
When the U.S. Open has been played at West Coast venues allowing for prime-time telecasts, McCarley said viewership numbers have spiked. Team competitions, particularly the Ryder Cup, also resonate. The combination of those factors was instrumental in driving TGL’s creation.
The setting itself, built around a colossal simulator screen, is designed to bring cutting-edge technology to a competition in which viewers will be allowed to listen in on everything players on both teams are saying while the action unfolds.
“You set out to achieve the more important things, which is golf in prime time, every shot live, all of the data that can be available, and do it in an environment that’s familiar to sports fans,” McCarley said.
“Sports fans know what it’s like to walk into an arena, sit in your seat, have two teams enter and two hours later one team leaves a winner. Creating a form of the game that’s familiar to sports fans, it hits on all the attributes that we know are positive tailwinds when it happens in golf. Team golf, prime time, every shot live.”
It’s new, it’s different and it’s almost here.