Golf’s New Frontier

By Scott MacLean

Last week, while most TV’s at Sportsfreak Towers were waiting for the delayed start of the cricket against Sri Lanka, mine was on the debut of golf’s newest venture, the tech-driven TGL – short for TMRW Golf League.

TGL is the brainchild of sports executive and former Golf Channel boss Mike McCarley in partnership wih two the games biggest names; Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. And the concept is relatively simple; take the rapidly growing simulator golf market* and pair it with the stadium/party hole concept (think of the 16th at the Phoenix Open, or the 12th at LIV Golf’s Adelaide event). Put it in a state-of-the-art venue, add PGA Tour stars in a competition format, and put together a package for TV, and you have the TGL.

With such heavyweights fronting the project, finding money for it doesn’t appear to have been difficult with the list of investors featuring a veritable ‘whos-who’ of American sport: basketballers Steph Curry, Shaquille O’Neal, Dwyane Ward, and Kevin Durant, baseballers Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, NFL quarterback Josh Allen, Formula 1 great Sir Lewis Hamilton, and women’s stars Alex Morgan, Diana Taurasi, and the GOAT herself Serena Williams. The players themselves are formed into six teams of four, of which three take part on the match itself.

Thirty holes have been designed for TGL with those to be used in each match notified in advance. The holes are the mix of par-3, 4, and 5s, and while most look like real holes, some are the sort of fantasy things you’d find in an artists depiction of the “Worlds Hardest Golf Holes”.

The match format takes place over 15 of those holes. The first nine is a team alternate-shot format and the last six are head-to-head. Teams earn a point for winning the hole (taking fewer shots than their opposition), but unlike traditional matchplay the match is played in full and doesn’t end when one team cannot get a tie at best. If there is a tie, there is a shootout-style nearest-the-pin contest to decide the winner.  There are a few wrinkles like the “hammer” and a pace-of-play shot clock, but the whole thing wraps up a TV-friendly two-hour timeframe. The season comprises a full round-robin followed by semi-finals and a Final, adding up to 18 weeks.

But for me, the star of the show was the venue itself. The SoFi Centre in Palm Beach Gardens in Florida has been purpose built for the TGL and has a playing surface slightly smaller than a football field, plus stands and all the other things spectators would want. One end is the “ScreenZone” where players hit full shots at a video screen and a view of the holt they’re playing just as they would on a real course. Two boxes are used, and rather than synthetic materials actual grass is used for tee and fairway shots, longer grass for the rough, and sand for fairway bunkers. Each shot is measured for its clubhead and ball speed, launch angle, spin rate, face angle and curvature to determine its path and where it will end up. Once the ball is within 45m of the hole, the action switches to the “GreenZone”. Here the green and bunkers are mounted on a 40m turntable that rotates through a full 360 degrees to present the shot required, while underneath a system of actuators raise and lower points so that the green can be unique for each of the 30 holes that have been designed so far. LED lighting marks where players place their ball to start finishing the hole out.

The only drawback was that whole artificial feel of it, you don’t have the natural backdrop of an Augusta National, a Pebble Beach, or St Andrews. But on the plus side you get to see the games leading players on a day of the week when golf is seldom in the conversation, hear them and watch their decision-making up close, and see some really cool tech in action.

Golf new frontier is here, and it might just revolutionise how the game is experienced.

(* Want some idea of how big this is becoming? My club, Martinborough in the south Wairarapa has recently built a new clubhouse and it includes a dedicated space for a simulator!) 

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