What is TGL,
TGL was announced in August 2022 and is set to start this coming January 2025. The PGA, alongside golfing stars Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Mike McCarley, announced the creation of the “3 on 3 golf league”, which will be broadcast on ESPN.
The format of the competition will see six teams from major cities across the east and west coast of the US compete in 2-hour, 15-hole weekly matches with playoffs (2 single semifinal games) and a best-of-3 championship decider.
Games will be split across ‘triples’ contested over 9 holes 3 vs 3 alternating shots and ‘Singles’ head-to-head sessions over 6 holes.
Winning a hole is worth a single point to a team, which is accumulated at the end of the games to decide a winning team. If points are tied, an overtime game will decide the winners.
The League format will see winning teams gain 2 points in both normal play and overtime, with an overtime loss of 1 point and a regular loss of 0 points.
The Venue,
The competition will be held in a “first-of-its-kind venue” at the Sofi Centre, Florida, on Monday or Tuesday evening in the US. The Stadium will be the inaugural and currently only home of the league.
The Sofi has 250,000 square feet on the Palm Beach State College campus, with a venue capacity that will allow for 1,500 fans to be in attendance after the TLGs field is set up to play.
The competitors will have to hit balls into a screen similar to indoor golf, yet the screen will be “24 times the size of a normal simulator screen, from up to 35 yards out”.
‘Driving for show and putting for dough’ will be determined in the shot game with an eye-catching “tec[neology] infused modern green, with an adaptable surface” which will be “Larger than 4 basketball courts”.
Alongside these innovative rules, a shot clock, referee’s, time outs, and a hammer “to raise the stakes” alongside players being miked up.
Teams, and Players,
The 6 TGL teams are as follows:
The Atlanta Drive will be led by Justin Thomas, with Patrick Cantlay, Lucas Glover, and Billy Horschel.
Boston Common will be led by Rory McIlroy and also includes Keegan Bradley, Hideki Matsuyama, and Adam Scott.
Jupiter Links Golf Club will be led by Tiger Woods with Max Homa, Tom Kim, and Kevin Kisner.
New York Golf Club will be led by Cameron Young with Matt Fitzpatrick, Rick, and Xander Schauffele.
The Bay Golf will be led by Shane Lowry with Ludvig Åberg, Wyndham Clark, and
Min Woo Lee.
Los Angeles is led by Justin Rose, Collin Morikawa, Sahith Theegala, and Tommy Fleetwood.
All teams have social media accounts across a range of platforms, notably on X(Twitter) and Instagram. Clubs have real team owners such as Tiger Woods and even tennis stars Serina and Venus Williams.
This has accumulated great team aspects drawn upon American fandom, with super Americanised and advertisements tailored to a audience for sure.
Teeing off When?
The league tees off between New York Golf Club vs The Bay Golf Club on Wednesday, 8th January, 2 am GMT, Followed by 14 mid-week fixtures up until the start of the playoff semifinals on March 18th and 19th, with a 3 game (If necessary) final playoff from March 24th - 26th.
Discussion,
The TGL is definitely going to be a welcomed tournament for the sport of golf, with significant backing already from PGA tour pros and clear time and effort being put into publicising the teams and events through social media.
The 2-hour time frame weekly, alongside team alternating shots during gameplay, cuts down on the long multiple-day golf tours, which can be hard to follow, lasting over 4 hours per day, usually over 4 days.
This should appeal to a younger audience, with a Neilson study in 2019 suggesting generation-Z “prefers shorter, snackable content over entire games or matches with long periods between lead changes and scoring”.
The game's hybrid technology is like an esport, sport hybrid, something the first of its kind in a major sport. Its 15-designed one-of-a-kind custom-digital courses pave the way for designers to lead into the sports world. They are an innovation alongside its customisable putting green.
The tournament already seems to be doing a great job at tapping into the potential of a younger-focused audience, with bright visuals and videos explaining the competition alongside the said teams' badges and social pages.
However, this tournament does not exclusively state this aim and will be special for fans of golf of all ages, key as the same Neilson study showed that compared to 18% Gen-Z, 22.2% of people are interested in Golf between the ages of 25-69 in the US.
However, Issues could arise through the conception of the tournament's forward-thinking technologies. The implementation of players being miked up at all times could lead to the occasional loss of golf courtesy, which can often be seen by golfers on PGA tours.
For example, Tyrell Hatton was seen snapping his club in anger recently on the DP World Tour Championship on Saturday, the 16th of November.
Closer to the tournament in 2022, Tiger Woods was caught on a hot mike saying, "Oh f*** off" after an approach shot.
It would be definitely of interest to see if any issues like this arise from when the tournament starts in January, leading to the finals in late March, and what the TGL or PGA would do to mitigate this.
The PGA should hope the launch of the TGL will help support their fight against the Saudis LIV tour. This well and truly could be Golfs T20 moment, something that saw cricket gain in “Global Expansion,
Financial Growth, Player Opportunities, and Entertainment Value”, having a high in 2022 of 1.28 Billion live viewers and 6.58 Billion views across social platforms.
We will await January 2025 to observe if the TGL can have these profitable affects on Golf.
Amazing piece!