TGL: An Opportunity Missed

By James Day, founder Urban Golf

The opening night of Tiger and Rory’s new TGL format aired this week, and the good news is that indoor golf is finally getting the primetime coverage that the booming simulator market deserves.

But having sat through the first match last night – a one-sided affair between six players seemingly randomly allocated to either New York Golf Club or The Bay Golf Club – my overwhelming feeling was that this was an opportunity missed.

Why? Clearly this was a first outing for the format, the players and the production team, and I’ve

no doubt that the broadcast will get slicker over the coming weeks. But there seemed to me to be

some fundamental flaws that might stop TGL becoming the disrupter that many of us believe the

professional game desperately needs.

The Tech

The most obvious feature of TGL is the giant simulator screen, which is 20 x the size of the screens that we have at Urban Golf. But the ball tracking is provided by FullSwing Golf, a technology that we’re intimately familiar with. In fact, I threw away 14 FullSwing simulators in favour of a completely new system that uses high-speed cameras rather than infra-red or radar, because the fundamental fact is that FullSwing just isn’t very good. They do, however, have one, Tiger Woods as an investor, which explains why they are the technology partner for TGL.

We can see the limitations of the technology in the lag between the player hitting a shot and the ball flight appearing on that giant screen, and in the lack of on-screen data presented as part of the broadcast. Camera-based launch monitors can instantly provide every single data point of a golf shot, which would significantly enhance the viewer experience (and highlight just how extra-ordinarily talented these players are).

The Stadium

The purpose-built arena features as indoor putting green that the players hit to once they get within 50 yards of the hole. And coupled with the giant screen, that dictates the size of the playing area, which feels like a giant sound stage where spectators are a peripheral after-thought.

I’m sure that the concept of the Greenzone came about because the FullSwing technology can’t handle short-game shots well – which is true, but isn’t the case for the latest generation of camera-based systems.

I’d still use a putting green with accentuators to let the players show off their putting skills, but the studio could be a more intimate setting that really sets up for the TV audience – think Soccer AM meets The Masters, but with a hint of Jools Holland’s Hooternanny.

The Course

One of the really exciting things about simulator golf is that course design isn’t limited by the realities of building in the real world – the boring things like drainage, agronomy and traffic management that make up a lot of traditional course architecture. In the early days, simulator companies were so desperate to prove that this was ‘proper golf’ that they focused on recreating Pebble Beach or The Old Course, whereas now we’re seeing a new brand of course architecture emerging.

But the holes designed by Agustin Pizá were a strange mix of standard-issue PGA Tour blandness and whacky crazy golf, when this could have been a great opportunity to educate viewers in the strategy that goes into making a great golf hole.

The People

Having the players mic’d up is a good idea, but if we’ve learned anything from the PGA Tour v LIV shit-show, it’s that most golfers really aren’t very interesting. (In fact, if world #1 Scottie Scheffler is anything to go by, you could argue that having a personality is an active disadvantage to conquering this notoriously frustrating game). So we end up in the place that golf always ends up, bringing in ‘personalities’ to try and make the game accessible and cool. Hence the presence of DJ Khalid, who adds precisely zero insight for the viewer and undermines the credibility of the format as a proper golf contest.

Week three of the TGL sees Tiger and Rory on opposing sides, and the presence of golf’s two heavyweights will undoubtedly draw a big audience. Executed right, this could be an amazing experience for TV viewers – with architecture that demands a strategic approach to every shot, and technology that allows us to see exactly how well these great players can execute.

Last night’s broadcast fell short of that high bar, but TGL has finally arrived. And it’s easier to make an existing thing better than to create something completely new from scratch.