When Monty Python’s Flying Circus debuted on British TV in 1969, it was something wholly original. Comedy traces to Greek theater more than 400 years B.C., but the Monty Python troupe put such an intellectually absurdist twist on sketch performances that it created its own genre. After two years, it released a compilation of re-created sketches to the American audience in a 1971 feature film, the title of which was delivered in the theatrical trailer by John Cleese while sprawled across an office desk in a park wearing a pink bikini.
“And now for something completely different,” says Cleese, using the transitional catchphrase with which fans of the TV show were already quite familiar.
It would be an amusing touch if each new episode of the premiere season of TGL, which debuts on January 7, were to open with co-founders Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy – or any of the other 22 PGA Tour players signed up for the new tech-infused team golf league – re-creating some variation of the Monty Python oft-repeated motto. Because the hope is that the TGL finally does bring something completely different to golf entertainment.
“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,” Mike McCarley, founder and CEO of TMRW Sports, told GGP’s Ron Green Jr. recently. “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.”
Golf, as an audience-driven entertainment concept, needs something new and interesting. That something is not LIV Golf, which is just another version of the same old thing that clearly hasn’t resonated with the wider audience beyond being a three-day party at venues starved for elite golf such as Adelaide, Australia, and Nashville, Tennessee. As a TV product, LIV offers nothing innovative except gaudy graphics that are hard to read and understand.
LIV is trying to lean into its team model, believing that it can capture something that works with fans in events such as the Ryder and Solheim cups. But aside from its season-ending Team Championship, which actually has head-to-head matches that build in drama, the team element is just a math problem wrapped inside a traditional stroke-play tournament. And even the 54-hole event offers no real rhythm for the audience to grab hold of, because the shotgun start has players finishing staggered all over the golf course.
Golf has been trying to develop made-for-TV content pretty much since TV became a part of American life. “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf” debuted in 1961 and ran through 1970, typically featuring challenge matches between marquee American players against international stars in exotic places all around the world and hosted by Gene Sarazen. Occasionally there were superstar all-American matchups at places such as Pine Valley (Gene Littler vs. Byron Nelson, 1962), Pebble Beach (Jack Nicklaus vs. Sam Snead, 1963) and Houston Country Club (Ben Hogan vs. Snead, 1965). The episodes remain a delight to watch.
The show was rebooted in 1994-2002 by Jack Nicklaus Productions with Gary Player as host to matches featuring a new generation of global stars.
The special-edition made-for-TV match model has been tried in many different forms – the Battle of Bighorn; Showdown at Sherwood; The Match. Tiger Woods and Annika Sörenstam vs. David Duval and Karrie Webb in a prime-time alternate-shot match in 2001 at Bighorn was probably its zenith.
But aside from that, golf’s made-for-TV events haven’t really caught on as typically one-off annual affairs. The Thanksgiving-week Skins Game was a huge hit for a while, drawing Masters-level audiences early on to watch golf’s Big Three (plus Tom Watson) and various legendary foursomes through the years play for hole-by-hole stakes. It ran from 1983 to 2008 before finally dying due to dim ratings in the modern sports-saturated environment.
The special-edition made-for-TV match model has been tried in many different forms – the Battle of Bighorn; Showdown at Sherwood; The Match. Tiger Woods and Annika Sörenstam vs. David Duval and Karrie Webb in a prime-time alternate-shot match in 2001 at Bighorn was probably its zenith. Tiger and Phil Mickelson revised the concept in the inaugural The Match in 2018, and it has continued with various celebrity guests and relatively diminished interest since.
This Thanksgiving week, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler will represent the PGA Tour against LIV’s Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau in a match designed to spur movement on a peace agreement between the rival tours.
But all of these things are still golf as we know it. TGL is golf as a new generation growing up on simulation games and Topgolf is coming to know it with 24 identifiable stars from the sport their parents watch on tour composed of six four-man teams (of which only three will play any given match) competing in alternate-shot and head-to-head singles competition.
The 12-week TGL season – with televised live team matches primarily in primetime on Monday and Tuesday nights on ESPN channels – will culminate in a two-night best-of-three SoFi Cup series March 24-25. The 15 scheduled matches – all played in the TGL’s custom-built, 1,500-seat SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida – will run in a two-hour window and have fans surrounding the playing arena.
Using a mix of technology throughout SoFi Center’s field of play, teams will face off across 15 of 30 custom-designed holes in a hybrid of virtual and real-life action. They’ll hit their shots from boxes featuring real grass or sand to play custom-designed, virtual holes projected onto a 3,400-square-foot screen (64 feet-by-53 feet) that’s nearly 24 times larger than a standard golf simulator screen.
Once teams are inside approximately 50 yards, they will transition to live action and finish each hole within a 22,475-square-foot short-game complex that transforms between holes. TGL’s green will use advanced technology to modify the shape of the green on every hole, including a 41-yard-wide turntable that rotates the green and three bunkers to change approach angles and nearly 600 motorized actuators embedded under the synthetic putting surface to morph its topography.
New York Golf Club member Rickie Fowler explained the gist of the TGL concept in this video.
Every player will be mic’d up during the matches and be governed by a 40-second shot clock. State-of-the-art graphics and data will be available to the audience throughout the competition, making it ripe to take advantage of gambling scenarios.
There have been other outside-the-box golf programming experiments. Golf Channel had a decent run with its “Big Break” reality competition. Holey Moley is a modern take on the old professional putting competitions on Putt-Putt Golf Courses that were a big thing in the 1970s.
None of those featured household-name stars of golf, whom we’ll get to see compete in a more intimate environment playing high-stakes simulator competition that is relatable to a modern generation.
TGL is not just the same old golf as we know it. It’s different, and different might be just what the audience is seeking.