“I want to be the indoor Scottie Scheffler,” quipped Shane Lowry to his Bay Club team-mates Ludvig Aberg and Wyndham Clark at one point of the inaugural match of the newfangled version of golf that is the TGL, far removed from the sport’s hickory-shafted origins on the rugged coastline of Scotland.
Dreamed up by none other than Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy – both among the spectators at the high-tech SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida – the TGL concept got off to a solid, entertaining start even if Lowry’s Bay Club had a landslide 9-2 win over the New York Club trio of Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick and a bespectacled Rickie Fowler.
First impressions? It’s new, innovative and, even with some rough edges that can be smoothed out without too much brain power required, the new indoor team-formatted golf game looks like it could work, with Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links team set to make its debut in round two next Tuesday. The matches are exclusively on Sky Sports on this side of the pond.
So, it’s different. From the WWE, UFC-styled loud introductions from the MC to the actual play which involves players hitting into a giant five-storey high screen followed by short game play on a rotating green (which featured 600 hydraulic jacks beneath to alter the putting surface).
Lowry, indeed, hit the opening tee shot and a sign of his nerves was that he ventured on to the grass box without a tee. Which immediately put him under pressure to hit before the 40 seconds shot-clock ran out. He had eight seconds to spare, as it happened. But that shot clock worked throughout in keeping the speed of play up and without any of the snail-like shenanigans that have crept into professional golf.
There were no time penalties in this first initiation of the TGL, with Bay Club team leader Lowry claiming afterwards: “Our team is not going to have any trouble with that. We’re three of the quicker players out there”.
This is golf but not as we know it. As Woods, in his brief time in the commentary booth, put it: “It is a dream that became reality and is ready to take off into another stratosphere ... it’s not traditional golf but it is golf”.
Certainly, with virtual holes designed by among others Jack Nicklaus and Augustin Piza, there is a challenging and fun element. As Piza described his design concepts, “it’s like writing a good book ... a plot and rising action”.
The holes featured names like PICK YER PLUNDER (where there were three fairway options of varying difficulty to find off the tee), BOOMERANG (yep, like a crescent fairway) and CRACK ON while another element of the rule book was the idea of teams having the chance to throw down the Hammer (in reality a towel) to put added pressure on the opposition.
This was the debut match of a league featuring six teams, with four progressing on to the playoff semi-finals before the final showdown. In all, there is a $21 million pot of money to be won, with $9m going to the winning team.
The first match was a lopsided affair which saw Lowry and Co put down a strong marker for advancement already with Schauffele – wearing a hot mic – conceding that his New York team’s opening performance was “embarrassing”.
Woods, for his part, called the one-sided nature of the clash a “landslide”.
Still and all, there was enough on offer in this first televised TGL league match to indicate that it will provide a more than interesting weekly slot for golf viewers going forward. Next week’s match featuring Woods will be screened by Sky from midnight in the Tuesday time slot that will be part and parcel of the upcoming few months.
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