Inside TGL Opening Night: A ‘Pretty Cool Experience’ With Music, Fast Golf and a Rout

The Bay Golf Club easily won the first match of the tech-infused golf league, but Bob Harig writes that the experience mattered more than the outcome and the players appear sold on the concept.

The Bay Golf Club easily defeated New York Golf Club in a match contested over 15 holes, one of many wrinkles in the simulator golf league. / GREG LOVETT/PALM BEACH POST / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — The golf is quick, the music is loud, the technology is impressive. So, too, is the building called the SoFi Center where the first TGL match took place Tuesday night on the campus of Palm Beach State College.

The fact that the Bay Golf Club routed New York Golf Club 9-2 and clinched the match through 10 of 15 holes is probably of little consequence now.

In the beginning, this new tech-infused golf league that is part of TMRW Sports is more about first impressions, understanding the concept and buying into something new and different.

The actual results and who does what will, perhaps, matter as TGL moves along from week to week toward a conclusion in March. Not so much right now.

With considerable hype and marketing might, TGL started a few minutes late after a lead-in from a Duke-Pitt basketball game on ESPN, and concluded in an hour and 51 minutes.

It is a TV show, after all.

“Other than the fact that we were on the receiving end (of a loss) tonight—set that aside—it’s really cool walking into an arena,” said Rickie Fowler, who is on the New York team along with Xander Schauffele and Matt Fitzpatrick. “This is something fun for the game of golf. It’s not trying to compete with what we do on (the PGA) Tour. It’s a supplement to the game and hopefully opens some peoples’ eyes to what is possible.”

Shane Lowry, the 2019 British Open champion, had the honor of being the first player to hit a shot in TGL history and laced one “into the fairway” via the 60-foot simulator screen that moments later spits out info such as the distance, the rollout, the remaining length to the pin and the apex of the shot.

Lowry, who played a practice match Monday for the first time, admitted he was nervous.

“It was a pretty cool experience,” Lowry said. “It all happens quickly. It’s loud and it goes pretty fast. I had an awesome time out there.”

Lowry was joined by teammates Wyndham Clark and Ludvig Aberg. Getting used to the players, who they play for, and the actual team names will be part of the learning process.

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, both of whom play for different teams and did not compete Tuesday night, were nonetheless on hand to witness the proceedings, both spending time in the broadcast booth and helping with commentary.

It is in both of their best interests as they are investors in the league founded by former Golf Channel executive Mike McCarley.

As it was the first of 15 shows that will take place through March, there will undoubtedly be some growing pains.

As a witness in the building, the commercial breaks—TV show, remember—seemed long.

Also, those in attendance could not hear the broadcast—the music in the arena would have made it difficult anyway—which yields the banter and talking among teammates that is supposed to take place between the players.

Of course, with a rather lopsided result—the Bay Golf Club was up 6-0 early and basically never challenged—it made any kind of trash talk difficult.

“We’re going to be the most hated team,” said Lowry, pointing to Clark, who apparently did his share of yapping.

“Not much for us to say, we were getting killed,” Schauffele said.

The two-time major winner in 2024 who returned from a 30th-place finish Sunday at the season-opening Sentry in Hawaii, seemed miffed at the performance.

“That was as bad as it possibly could have gone for the New York Golf Club today,” Schauffele said. “Bummer for the boys here. That was a rough go. I heard a few boos from the crowd when I duffed my chip there so definitely incentive to do better the next time.”

The format might take a little getting used to. It’s 15 holes—not 18—and the first nine holes of each match are called triples. The three players on each team alternate hitting shots with the low score on a hole earning a point. There are no carryovers if there are ties.

One option allows a team to throw the “hammer” which is essentially a press and makes the hole worth two points instead of one. A team that refuses to accept the hammer automatically forfeits the point.

After nine holes, the match changes to singles for the remaining six holes, with each player going head-to-head for two holes against the same opponent.

At that point, the Bay Golf Club was already up 6-1 and when they had clinched the match through 10 holes, the remaining five holes continued anyway because overall number of holes will serve as a tiebreaker later in the season. The top four teams make the playoffs with a two-out-of-three championship match series scheduled for late March.

None of that will much matter if all the bells and whistles don’t draw people in. For the true golf geeks, there is plenty to love if the intricacies of Trackman-type feed back from golf shots is your thing.

For the casual fan, it’s a different version of an arena sport with a fast pace. Players marveled at the beauty of having a 40-second shot clock—and how much they’d love to have something like that in competitive golf.

“It’s a glorified man cave in a way,” Fowler said.

“There’s a lot that’s been put into it to make this possible,” he continued. “But it’s also a little bit of a gamble or an experiment at the same time. This isn’t necessarily about it being great golf. You want the fans to have fun here and create a good experience, but I think the biggest driver is how it does on TV and how people view it. And if it does well there, it’s kind of sky’s the limit with what you could do as far as putting up arenas in different places.

“But this is just the start, so we’ll have to see how things go over the next handful of matches and how the feedback is and primarily on the side of people viewing at home.”

Will it be enough to get people to tune in again?

“We’ve got Tiger Woods (playing) next week, so we'll do all right next week, I know that,” Lowry said, chuckling. “I think it comes down to the players, and I think it comes down to who's out there in the arena. Like we said earlier, there is an element of entertainment out there, and even I said to the boys after we finished, like when the match was over after 10 holes, I said, the next half an hour we probably need to be better than we were in the entertainment kind of space, I suppose. I'm not sure if we were, but we did talk about it.

“So hopefully it goes from strength to strength from here, but I know we'll be all right next week.”