TGL, the new hyrbid indoor golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, has been a ratings success in its first four weeks.
The TV ratings for the ESPN broadcasts have met or exceeded expectations practically every week, and the league had its best match on Monday as Woods' Jupiter Links GC team beat McIlroy's Boston Common GC in an overtime chip-off.
One knock on the league, however, has been the number of shots hit by the pros that wind up well short or well long of their target. Critics of the league have suggested that the Full Swing simulator technology, which fuels the simulated golf on the screen-golf portion of the matches, is not up to snuff. However, McIlroy dismissed that notion based on his experience at SoFi Center on Monday.
"I went in there on Wednesday and I brought two other launch monitors with me," McIlroy said at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Tuesday. "I brought my GC Quad, I brought my TrackMan. Obviously hitting balls into the screen, and every number was virtually identical. That put my concerns to bed, which was really good."
The four-time major winner said the problem isn't the technology so much as the environment of playing simulator golf in an arena with an enormous screen compared to playing out in a natural environment with the looks and feels they're accustomed to experiencing.
"I think the big thing for us is you're hitting into a screen," McIlroy said. "It's obviously a big screen, but when you're playing outside you've got some sort of connection to the target, right? This is what we grew up doing, this is what we know. So when you get in there, it's very difficult to be like, OK, I'm going to aim, you know, on the right half of the screen or the left half of the screen and trust that it's actually going to do what you want it to do."
Developing trust with the simulator isn't something that happens overnight, especially with teams getting just five matches each. McIlroy sees that coming over the course of time.
"It's just getting more reps in there to familiarize yourself and trust it I think is the big thing," he said. "And the more and more that we play in there, the more we're going to get used to it and be comfortable."
As for the short-game shots in the Green Zone, the bunker play has been particularly difficult. McIlroy said that actually comes down to the condition of the sand from playing indoors.
"So in the arena as the night goes on and say the humidity drops in there, they have to water the sand quite a lot to keep the moisture in it to keep it," he said.
"They only get to water it before the game is played, but once we get in there, it starts to dry up. So the bunker shot I hit last night, yeah, it felt like my club was going through flour instead of going through sand."
TGL is very much a learning process in real time for everyone involved, and McIlroy, as well as the concept's owners and backers, know they're figuring it out as they go.
"Look, these are all the things that you learn on the fly," McIlroy said. "This is a startup, it's four weeks old."
