PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — As Billy Horschel was saying Wednesday during the unveiling of the arena and all the bells and whistles associated with TGL, the tech-infused golf league set to debut next month—this is not your typical golf simulator.
It’s not what you see at a local golf shop when being fitted for clubs and certainly not what you would encounter at a sports bar when playing a video game and hitting into a golf simulator.
“When someone hears about us playing simulator golf (they think) it is maybe a little gimmicky, and it’s not that,” said Horschel while part of a media presentation at the SoFi Center, the 250,000-square-foot venue that will be home to the inaugural TGL season.
“We’re hitting off real grass, we’re hitting real golf shots. Yes, there will be some artificial surfaces but there is a lot of technology that is going into this. It’s not just thrown together, ‘let’s do this.’ This is a lot of high-tech stuff and the way they’ve created the competition.”
There is no doubt the setup is impressive. The tech-infused venue is on the campus of Palm Beach State College and will allow for 1,500 fans to surround the field of play.
When the league launches Jan. 7 with the two of the six teams that will have three players each, the competitors will play in an arena that is 97 yards long with one half called the “screen zone” and the other the “green zone.”
Rickie Fowler is playing the second shot into a par-5 that ends up in a bunker. … he will play that shot from an actual bunker pic.twitter.com/YeqhVLfmGA
— Bob Harig (@BobHarig) December 18, 2024
Players will hit into a screen that is 64 feet wide and 53 feet high and will feature 30 different holes that can be used in each 15-hole match.
Players will hit tee shots from a teeing area that is 35 yards from the screen. The technology will trace where the ball lands on the hole, and depending if it is in the fairway, rough or a fairway bunker, the next shot will be played from a similar surface, including a patch of grass which serves as 2½ inches of rough.
From there, when playing to the green, the technology will then shine a light onto the other end of the arena where the ball lands—either on the green, off the green or in a bunker that is filled with sand.
The green will have several variations that shift the contours, height and flagsticks depending on the hole.
“There’s a lot of stuff that’s going on in this and what is behind that is going to make it different than what people are seeing on a golf course,” Horschel said. “This is supposed to be different. It’s supposed to be new, it’s supposed to be vast, engaging in a two-hour window, where you’re going to be able to see every golf shot and you’re going to see guys more engaged than they would be out on a PGA Tour event.”
Horschel was joined by PGA Tour players Rickie Fowler and Wyndham Clark for the presentation that also included TGL leaders including Mike McCarley, a former Golf Channel executive who founded a company along with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy called TMRW Sports.
TGL stands for Tomorrow Golf League and was first announced in 2022, with a proposed start date for January of this year. A late 2023 storm derailed those plans as there was extensive damage to the arena, which was rebuilt and still has plenty of surrounding work to be accomplished.
There is no question that the technology will be the big draw, as well as watching players hit the same shots they’d hit on a golf course while doing so in an arena that tracks where the ball goes. All players will be microphoned and there will be the ability to look up yardages and wind conditions before playing their next shot—which will have a 40-second shot clock.
The competition itself will see six teams play across a 10-week schedule that will have two weeks of playoffs concluding in late March. ESPN will televise each match.
There will be two sessions per TGL match. The first will see a nine-hole, 3-on-3 alternate shot format followed by the second session of singles, where players go one-on-one for six holes, with each golfer playing two holes during the session.
The six teams represent various cities—Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, the Bay Area (Northern California) and Jupiter, Fla., which is Woods’s home and the name of his team.
These teams have a who’s-who ownership lineup including Arthur Blank, John Henry and Tom Werner of Fenway Sports Group, Serena and Venus Williams, Steve Cohen (who owns the New York Mets) and basketball star Steph Curry.
Each team has four players but only three will play each week, offering some flexibility with their PGA Tour schedules.
The first week will see Fowler’s New York Golf Club against The Bay Golf Club, which includes Clark. The telecast will begin at 9 p.m. ET
The following week, Jan. 14, will feature Woods’s Jupiter Links team against the Los Angeles Golf Club, which includes Collin Morikawa. McIlroy is scheduled to make his debut in Week 4, Monday Jan. 27, when his Boston Common team plays against Woods’s team.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as ‘You’re Going to See Guys More Engaged’: New TGL Promises High Tech With Camaraderie.
