Editor’s note: “In Case You Missed It” is a GGP+ feature that highlights a story from GGP‘s Monday magazine.
PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLORIDA | A few weeks back, Mike McCarley, the visionary behind the TGL which will make its splashy and potentially landscape-altering debut Tuesday evening on ESPN, showed his wife a live shot from a construction camera as the ribbon boards were coming to life inside the Dreamworks-worthy SoFi Center where professional golf enters a new frontier this week.
The arena seats 1,500 spectators, who will watch some of the PGA Tour’s biggest stars hit shots into a simulator screen nearly six stories tall and chip and putt on an artificial green that can rotate and change its contours through the magic of a few computer keystrokes all while a shot clock ticks down during a two-hour match between two teams in a made-for-television season designed to fill a viewing window during winter nights.
“(My wife) looked at me and said it looks just like the pictures did five years ago. What’s the big deal?” McCarley recalled.
The big deal is TGL has gone from an idea generated by McCarley, a longtime television executive, and has been brought to life through imagination, cutting-edge technology, a hefty dose of star power led by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and the deep pockets of investors such as the Fenway Sports Group, Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen.
The TGL – which stands for Tomorrow’s Golf League – is a grand ambition.
It is a prime-time golf league with a schedule that runs from January through March, all of it happening inside a 250,000-square-foot facility on the campus of Palm Beach State College.
Whether the TGL captures the imagination of sports fans, not just golf fans, or it never finds traction with traditionalists who like their golf packaged into 72-hole stroke-play events, it won’t be for a lack of money or marketing.
As the TGL prepares to finally go live, the question is whether the concept and the characters resonate with an increasingly splintered viewing public.
“Maybe it’s something that the traditional golf fan finds interesting and sort of complementary to the golf that they usually watch,” said McIlroy, a member of the Boston Common team and a principal figure in the evolution of TGL. “And then maybe some people that have never watched the game before in any serious way think actually this is a pretty cool version of golf, and we can sort of get into it and we can root for a certain team that we haven’t really been able to do before.
“But, look, it’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a long time. And the big thing is hopefully it resonates with people and people really get interested in it and it can take off from there.”
From a purely curiosity standpoint, there is plenty to draw fans in, at least initially.
The venue itself is mesmerizing. It is approximately the size of a football field and features a simulator screen that’s 64 feet tall, approximately 24 times larger than a traditional simulator. Players will hit shots from real grass (there is a fairway cut and a rough cut) or sand from two tee areas, one 35 yards from the screen, the other 21 yards away.
There are 15 custom-designed holes that will be played – each match is 15 holes, divided between three-player alternate shot competition and three singles matches – and once players are within 50 yards of the green, they will play into the short-game complex.
The putting surface sits on a 41-yard wide turntable, allowing it to spin so each hole plays differently. There are nearly 600 hydraulic lifts beneath the putting surface that will change the contours from hole to hole.
“When (we) modeled it, in the real world it would mean going to get a bulldozer. Here, it was done with keystrokes,” said course designer Beau Welling, who helped create the short-game area.
“Many times on the way I thought, ‘this is never going to happen, this is impossible.’ But the team they assembled was awesome and someone would come up with an idea and you’d think, ‘yeah, this is possible.’”
As for the show itself, no one is going to confuse the TGL with the Masters at Augusta National.
Players will enter the arena with lights flashing and music playing. There will be an announcer and a DJ during the competition. Players will be mic’d up, less for back-and-forth chatter between teams but more for fans to hear teammates as they talk about shots they are facing.
A 40-second shot clock is prominently featured and once the time dips below 15 seconds, the sound of a heartbeat gets increasingly louder.
“I would say for the hard-core golfer, it’s still golf,” said Wyndham Clark, a member of the Bay Golf Club team, which plays the inaugural match against the New York Golf Club. “It’s so accurate, the technology is amazing. You’re going to still have that feel, and they should love this. But they should also realize that this isn’t golf outdoors. It’s a new animal, and they’ve got to accept that.
“Then for the new golfer, I think it’s fun because it speeds up golf. Now we’re playing in such a short time, and there’s no lag time. There’s no walking. We only get 40 seconds. I think that’s going to hopefully appeal to the new golfer, that it’s like ‘wow, this is fast, this is fun.’ This is like other sports inside an arena.”
“Does that same fan say I’m a fan of that player and maybe on Sunday they follow them and all of a sudden the sport has a new fan?” – Mike McCarley
The TGL is banking on fans responding to the team concept (each of the six teams has four players, three of whom will compete in each match). Team golf works brilliantly in the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup but it has not caught on with LIV Golf.
For those who believe TGL is borrowing from LIV’s playbook, the concept was hatched before LIV came into existence. Bringing it to life has required patience and detailed planning.
What does success look like for TGL?
That’s one of the questions still to be answered.
“If we can find new fans because we’re presenting this in a way that might not be your or my golf but it’s kids’ golf, they would like to see this in a different way because … they may have started playing golf at Topgolf or they may not be a fan at all,” McCarley said.
“Maybe they found it because they saw it opening night because it’s following the Duke basketball game on ESPN. This is different so I want to watch it and check it out. Maybe they get introduced to a personality because they hear them when they’re mic’d up. Does that same fan say I’m a fan of that player and maybe on Sunday they follow them and all of a sudden the sport has a new fan?
“To me, long term, that’s how I will measure success.”