TGL, the Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy-owned hybrid indoor golf league, has set a new debut date in January 2025 and will play their first season in a newly designed host venue.
The inaugural TGL season will kick off in January 2025 with three conseuctive Tuesday sessions on ESPN, and the six four-person teams will compete over the course of the season at SoFi Center on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
TGL's second-week match on Tuesday, Jan 14, will air the night following ESPN’s Monday Night Football Wild Card Playoff game, while the following week's match airs the night following ESPN’s coverage of the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
TGL has postponed its inaugural season to 2025 after an incident caused significant the domed facility that is to house the hybrid golf league. On Nov. 14, according to the league, "a failure of the temporary power system and backup systems used during construction caused the (SoFi Center) dome to deflate, which caused damage to the air-supported dome section of the site."
Redesigned TGL venue
SoFi Center has been redesigned to get away from the bubble-style structure to a steel-supported structure. The venue is 250,000 square feet and will host 1,500 fans. The TGL field of play will be 97 yards long and 50 yards wide, with players able to play short-game shots and putts of 50 yards or less to an area called the GreenZone, which includes a green and three bunkers that site on a 41-yard-wide turntable that rotates the green and three bunkers to change approach angles, while nearly 600 motorized actuators as part of Full Swing’s Virtual Green technology embedded under the synthetic putting surface to morph its topography as needed.
For shots longer than 50 yards, the players will otherwise hit shots into an enormous simulator screen that is meant to look more like a golf experience. The players will hit off of grass tee boxes to play custom-designed, virtual holes projected onto a 64’x46’ screen.
TGL format
The TGL format is designed to produce a two-hour match that will feature player banter and move quickly. The entire match will be 15 holes, split up into two segments. All players will wear microphones for live chatter.
The first portion of the match is a nine-hole match featuring three-player alternate shot. Each three-person team will play out the hole, with a player who hits the tee shot going first, followed by the selected player who hits the next shot and the third player hitting the third shot, if necessary. If a fourth shot is necessary, then the player who hit the tee shot on that hole will hit, and the lineup will repeat until the ball is holed. The team who completes the hole in the fewest strokes wins that hole.
The second segment of the match features one-on-one match play. Beginning with the 10th hole, each team will select an A, B and C player. The A player on each team will compete against each other on the 10th hole, with the players completing the hole solo. The player with the lowest score on that hole will win the hole. The B players will compete on the 11th hole, and the C players will compete on the 12th hole. Then the cycle will repeat once again until the match is done.
Each hole is worth 1 point, and if the hole is halved, then the point is split. The team with the most points at the end of the night wins the match. If the match is tied at the end of 15 holes, there will be an overtime played until a winner is determined.
The winning team for the night will earn 2 points in the season-long standings. If a team loses in overtime, they'll earn 1 point. If a team loses in regulation, they earn 0 points.
The top four teams will qualify for the playoffs, and they'll enter a bracket-style competition to determine a champion. The championship match will be a best-of-three competition, meaning there will be as many as three episodes of matches featuring the two finalists.
TGL teams
There are six TGL teams of four players each, with three of the players competing in each match.
- Atlanta Drive GC: Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Billy Horschel, and Lucas Glover
- Boston Common Golf: Rory McIlroy, Keegan Bradley, Adam Scott and fourth team member to be announced
- Jupiter Links Golf Club: Tiger Woods
- Los Angeles Golf Club: Tommy Fleetwood, Sahith Theegala, Collin Morikawa, and Justin Rose
- TGL New York: To be announced
- TGL San Francisco: To be announced
Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton were to be part of the league, but Rahm backed out before signing with LIV Golf, while Hatton was backed out of the league after also signing with the Saudi-owned league. The additional committed TGL players that are not currently on a roster are: Wyndham Clark, Xander Schauffele, Max Homa, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tom Kim, Cameron Young, Min Woo Lee, Rickie Fowler, Shane Lowry, and Kevin Kisner
