TGL’s collapsed arena? That won’t happen again

At this point in 2024, we were supposed to see a lot of TGL, the mixed-reality golf league headed up by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. We were supposed to be entering Week 9 of the season schedule, with matches taking place on Monday and Tuesday nights. The playoffs of TGL’s first season would be coming up. Tiger Woods would be playing a lot more public golf.

Then Mother Nature happened. 

As golf fans would remember well, a mid-November storm ripped through southern Florida with high winds and rain. When Sofi Arena, the in-construction future home of the league, suffered an unexpected loss of power, the weather ripped through the membrane of the league’s cloth dome roof, too. The skeleton of the arena quickly circulated across the internet a day later, and before long league organizers were forced to postpone the first season by a full 12 months. 

Three months after that decision, the TGL has returned to the news, acknowledging a big change is coming. As first reported by Sports Business Journal, TGL will now launch next season with “insulated steel walls and a steel-supported roof” for its arena. According to the report, the new, more formidable design will be able to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, whereas the original design was outfitted enough to withstand a Category 4 storm. 

Because the arena is situated on the campus of Palm Beach State College, changes to the original plans have been presented to the college’s board of trustees. As one of the diagrams involved in the late-February presentation shows, the new arena design would have a roof that is slightly lower than the dome, but would have a wider frame. 

A TMRW Sports spokesperson offered the following statement: 

“TMRW Sports was pleased to have the opportunity to provide an update on its plan for constructing the upgraded venue using improved design elements and materials. The College is performing their duty and asking the right questions as part of a standard due diligence process.

“Our aim is to create a venue that the College and Palm Beach communities, as well as our fans and partners, will enjoy visiting for years to come. This is part of the process, and we are appreciative of both our wide-ranging partnership with Palm Beach State College and their agreement to create a special March meeting date ahead of their regularly scheduled meeting on April 16.”

You can read the full Sports Business Journal report here, which also notes that TMRW Sports has created a “performance lab” in southern Florida that allows for players of the league to test out the hitting conditions they’ll face when the league launches in nine months.