TGL, the experimental golf league founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in partnership with the PGA Tour, set a new launch date of Tuesday, January 7, 2025.
TGL presented by SoFi will premier on ESPN and ESPN+. The first three matches will air in prime time on the first three Tuesdays of the new year.
“As we plan the 2025 launch of TGL presented by SoFi, we now have the first three Tuesdays in January circled to introduce sports fans to this new form of team golf,” said Mike McCarley, founder and CEO of TMRW Sports, the Tiger and Rory-backed venture behind TGL.
“January is a tremendous time of year for fans looking for prime time sports, and TGL's launch will complement the start of the PGA Tour season and take advantage of ESPN's promotional machine across their coverage of the NFL and College Football Playoff.
TGL will introduce a rapid-fire, indoor competition, featuring golf stars competing in various arcade-style games. TGL will incorporate “advanced technology”, the ability to see (and presumably bet on) every shot live, and mic'd up players.
TGL was slated to launch this past January, but a November storm caused the roof to collapse on its custom arena, the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
🚨😦❌ #NEW: The dome structure has collapsed at the SoFi Stadium where TGL matches are slated to be played early next year. Unclear how this will affect preparations for the league. (📸: @luckiestgolfer via @flushingitgolf) pic.twitter.com/I4APp249PU
— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) November 15, 2023
On Monday, TGL unveiled renderings of a revised 250,000-square-foot venue on the campus of Palm Beach State College. The arena will feature “an intimate and unique ‘greenside' fan experience with 1,500 seats wrapping around TGL's field of play, which at 97 yards long and 50 yards wide is almost the size of a football field,” per the press release.
Max Homa, Wyndham Clark, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele (but not Jon Rahm) are among the stars who have committed to TGL. The PGA Tour schedule is busy throughout January, with two tournaments in Hawaii and two in California.
TGL matches will feature virtual 3-on-3 events, short-game challenges on a specially-built complex called the “Green Zone”, and shot clocks.
“The GreenZone will use advanced technology to make each hole a unique challenge for the teams, including its 41-yard-wide turntable that rotates the green and three bunkers to change approach angles and using nearly 600 motorized actuators as part of Full Swing’s Virtual Green technology embedded under the synthetic putting surface to morph its topography,” reads the TGL website.
Each team will represent a different city: San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Jupiter, FL. Tiger will captain the Jupiter Links Golf Club. Full rosters and 2025 season schedules will be announced at a later date.
The creation of TGL comes amid increased efforts by the PGA Tour to grow the game amid LIV Golf competition. Last Monday, Tiger hosted a meeting in the Bahamas with various bigwigs in global golf, including PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, policy board members Jordan Spieth and Valspar Championship winner Peter Malnati, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), which operated the LIV Golf League.
In recent weeks, Monahan, Tiger, and McIlroy have voiced optimism about an eventual partnership between the PGA Tour and PIF/LIV. Earlier this year, a $3 billion investment from the Strategic Sports Group funded a for-profit arm committed to marketing the sport, PGA Tour Enterprises. Tiger is vice president.
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