The last time we saw TGL, Billy Horschel was “blacking out” after making a putt to win the SoFi Cup for the Atlanta Drive to close out the inaugural season of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s simulator golf league.
Re-read that sentence, and you’d be forgiven if you thought you’d fallen through a wormhole and landed in professional golf’s upside-down. But TGL’s first season concluded with the high-tech league having a lot of momentum thanks to a secret sauce that allowed it to survive the technological kinks and broadcast woes of the first few weeks. While Tiger, Rory and the new tech was the hook, TGL’s success always banked on the players treating the 15-hole matches like something they wanted to win and not the made-for-TV hit-and-giggles that are just for money.
Once it was clear the players bought in, cared if they won and that fans should too, their personalities started to come through, the matches became more competitive and the entertainment increased.
“It was never a thing of, ‘Hey, we need to play better to win more money’,” Rickie Fowler said. “That’s all guys playing for pride out there. The money and stuff is a bonus. Most of us live around here — it works out being somewhat convenient but it was just trying to beat up on your buddies.”
After a successful first season, TGL returned Sunday for the first match of its second season facing the obvious questions: Would the secret sauce still be there? How can they build off of Season 1?
it was clear early on the answer to the first question was a resounding yes. Billy Horschel remains the type of entertainer TGL needs, Justin Thomas, who is out while recovering from back surgery, joined the broadcast booth to repeatedly chirp Xander Schauffele as he hooked his way around the SoFi Center and even took a dig at himself for needing Cameron Young to carry him at the Ryder Cup. When Horschel buried a long eagle putt on the final hole to win the match, Matt Fitzpatrick jabbed Horschel about making a third consecutive dagger putt against New York Golf Club. Something you’d only remember if you cared enough to keep it in your mind.
“That’s three times you’ve done that, do it to someone else,” Fitzpatrick said after Horschel raised his finger in the air after dealing another simulator death blow to NYGC.
These guys want to win everything they do, and TGL gives them an opportunity to do that in a different golf setting which allows them to show a different side of their personality. It’s not for everyone, and that’s OK, but it has something to it.
TGL’s the secret sauce is vital but it can be amplified by two things: technology tweaks that allow for more highlights, and, more importantly, outside-the-box holes that cause chaos.
Sunday’s opening salvo of TGL’s second season gave us both.
In the offseason, TGL made some subtle adjustments to the artificial green to lower the slope which should allow for more long putts made, more chip ins and potentially some aces. On Sunday, Young and Fitzpatrick made back-to-back 20-plus foot putts to tie the match late before Horschel canned a match-winning bomb on the final hole.
More highlights equals more excitement which amplifies the competition and elevates the product.
But the key to TGL becoming what it can and should be lies in two new holes that were unveiled Sunday: Stinger and Cenote.
The holes in the first season were fine but given that this is “golf but in a dome and with a giant screen,” the fact that the holes were mostly boiler-plate layouts we’d see at a PGA Tour event was a bit of a letdown. TGL neeed more Golden Tee, more Mario Golf and less, “well, that kind of looks like something we might see during the Florida Swing.”
Making the holes less realistic can only add to the fun and uniquness of a product that has buy-in from the world’s top players.
We saw that on Sunday, starting with Stinger, a par-4 that asks players to hit a low drive under a rock formation to get to the fairway.
The first attempt at attacking Stinger didn’t go well, as Xander Schauffele’s drive hit the top of the formation and bounded into the hazard. Horschel’s drive also hit the formation but dropped straight down. Schauffele’s wayward drive forced Young to hit a giant hook of a third shot to avoid another rock formation. Both teams made a bogey, and left an impression on the teams.
“Absolute mayhem, thanks guys! It’s an absolute free for all,” Schauffele said after the teams finished Stinger.
Cenote, a new hole designed by Agustin Piza, is a tricky par-3 that asks players to either hit a risky long iron into the green or hit a fairway wood or driver into a funnel behind the green.
Both Schauffele and Horschel hit their drives into the funnel and watched their balls roll off and onto the green for long birdie putts.
More off-the-wall holes should be something for TGL to lean into. The league is adding new holes tied to each of the franchise’s locations, but while those create a sense of place, they don’t invoke “mayhem” like Stinger and Cenote have the ability to do.
TGL is still in its infancy. It still has broadcast issues to iron out. Tech hurdles will arise. But as long as the players continue to want to be there, want to win and the product itself can be additive to the golf space while allowing players to show their personalities in a different environment, it can continue to build on the momentum it created in Season 1.
The secret sauce remains but an injection of quirkier holes can amplify what is already there. If you want to grow, you have to be willing to try new things. That should be the north star for Tiger and Rory’s simulator league after it already exceeded expectations in Year 1.
“We play professional golf for so long,” Horschel said after the match. “You do it for so long — the grind of the PGA Tour, the wear and tear — it’s just Groundhog Day over and over. You sort of lose that fire. You still have the desire to be great and accomplish your goals, but that fire sort of isn’t always burning as strong as it did when you first came out on Tour. But when you come out to something like this — something that’s completely different, something you couldn’t imagine — it sort of brings you to sort of as a kid. It’s something brand new, something fun to be a part of.”
Offered Horschel after returning to a simulator arena that now has a banner with his name on it (yes, the Atlanta Drive have a banner) and might as well be called Billy Horschel Field at SoFi Stadium.
“I did it to [New York] again,” Horschel said. “What a start to Season 2.”
