SoFi so good! And Tiger’s on the TGL ticket.

13 January 2025

The inaugural season of TGL, presented by SoFi, has just begun. It’s a new golf league, developed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, combining advanced technology with teams of top players from the PGA TOUR for two-hour weekly competitions. The teams, representing six different cities, will go head-to-head in a season-long competition at SoFi Center, a first-of-its-kind venue with a huge screen, 24 times the size of a normal simulator screen. The matches are televised – and the players are mic’d up. TGL, by the way, stands for ‘TMRW Golf League’.

American golf journalist Claire Rogers of the Rogers Report on Golf.com, who is working as one of the digital hosts for TGL, has already visited the SoFi centre and told us all about it. “It's really cool,” she said. “The screen itself is five storeys high. It's just massive. And you don't even realise it until you walk all the way up to it, and you're like, oh, wow…. There's boxes up top and then regular seating down below. And they have lights. It's music. the green itself rotates. It's just there's so much going on. It's a very exciting experience.”

Maybe think of Speed Chess in a nightclub, and you get some of the vibe. Claire believes it’ll attract a new generation of supporters to the game and offer a different option for existing golf fans: for example, she can imagine TGL as a great event for a birthday or bachelor party. The new league, then, isn’t in competition with the traditional sport but instead is an added attraction. “It is more packaged for the golf fan who likes the YouTube style stuff,” Claire explained, “where it's quick moving, it's more young, it's more energetic, there's a lot going on, so I think it is an interesting and a positive way to kind of grow the game.”

The atmosphere is very different from the respectful hush on a golf course. “Xander [Schauffele] was kind of talking back to the fans a little bit, joking with them,” said Claire. “That would probably never happen at a PGA tour event, but this was a really fun environment where they were allowed to show off their personalities. My sister is not a super big golf fan and she texted me and was like, Shane Lowry seems funny. And I was like, yes, he is. And now you got to know that.”

Other innovations, like the shot clock and the hammer (you’ll have to listen to the full interview to find out more!), ramped up the thrill factor to even greater heights while the simulator is, it seems, very accurate. If you want to understand how the competition works, there’s a great explanatory video on the TGL website: https://tglgolf.com/explained

The highlight of the second week of the competition is Tiger Woods’ participation. He’s playing for the Jupiter Links team, with Max Homa and Kevin Kisner. In their first outing, they face Los Angeles, featuring Colin Morikawa, Justin Rose, and Sahith Theegala.

Claire had a great time at the opening event, and it sounds like it was an experience she will never forget: “I think my highlight of the week was just being around these people, like who we are all so passionate about golf and about making this thing work. and it was just like the night went really well.. it was fun. Tiger. We got to see Tiger… I met Marty Smith, I met Matt Berry. It's been fun to kind of dip my toes into that world a little bit.”

As well as this being an all-new event, the big draw is getting a sense of the players’ personalities. There’s a behind-the-scenes, let-your-hair-down feel. And you get to see Tiger!

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