The structure of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TGL golf league is beginning to take shape.
Twenty-four PGA Tour pros have committed to TGL, as the league will have six teams with four players each. Five teams have been disclosed, with one left to be announced. Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco all have TGL franchises associated with their respective cities.
For each TGL match, two teams will send three players apiece to the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. This arena can welcome 1,600 spectators and has been specifically designed for virtual golf events. It includes a massive 65-foot screen into which players will hit.
The league also unveiled its ‘Modern Match Play’ Tuesday, the format that TGL will utilize for its inaugural season, which begins Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, on ESPN and ESPN+.
What is Modern Match Play?
Modern Match Play will be 15 holes, broken into nine holes of triples and six holes of singles matches.
Triples consist of 3-v-3 alternate shots.
Singles, meanwhile, are all head-to-head but with a rotating twist.
Two players from each team will square off on the 10th hole.
And then, on the 11th, two different players from each respective team will battle head-to-head.
Then, on the 12th hole, the final two players who had not yet competed in the singles portion will play each other.
This same process repeats over the 13th, 14th, and 15th holes.
To better illustrate how the singles component will work, consider this example, taken from the TGL website:
“The 10th hole begins with head-to-head play as Tiger Woods, representing his team, plays Rory McIlroy, representing the opposing team. The next hole, Shane Lowry faces Patrick Cantlay. And then Rickie Fowler faces Collin Morikawa. The cycles begin again for holes 13, 14, and 15, so in total, six holes of Singles will be played.”
Modern Match Play Scoring:
TGL scoring will differ significantly from the match play seen every other year at the Ryder Cup.
Each hole has a value of one point, and the team with the fewest strokes on a given hole wins that point. Should two teams tie on a hole, then no points are awarded. There are no carryovers.
Whichever team wins more points by the end of the 15-hole match will win.
Should the two teams playing find themselves tied at the end of the second session, an overtime round will commence. Overtime in TGL will be starkly different than the sudden-death playoffs that we see on the PGA Tour.
A 3-on-3 closet-to-the-pin competition will instead take place.
Whichever team hits two shots closer to the hole than their competitors will win the overtime period and, thus, the match.
Season Long Scoring:
The season-long scoring that the TGL will employ mirrors the points system utilized in the National Hockey League (NHL).
Two points are awarded to a team should they win in regulation. Teams will also receive two points if they win in overtime.
But if a team loses in overtime, they will receive one point.
A regulation loss, meanwhile, does not award any points.
Points are accumulated as the season progresses.
Playoffs:
The top four teams with the most points at the end of the 15-match regular season will advance to the single-elimination semifinals.
From there, the two winners will advance to the championship match, a best-of-three series.
Whoever wins the championship series will be crowned the inaugural champion of TGL.
The Course at SoFi:
The virtual golf course within the SoFi Center will be roughly the size of a football field. It will be infused with various technologies and cover an area that is 97 by 50 yards.
The players will hit from natural grass, rough, fairway, and sand into a massive 65-foot screen—roughly 20 times the size of a simulator commonly used among professionals and amateurs alike.
Aside from the giant screen, perhaps the most striking feature of the virtual golf course is the short game center and putting green.
For shots approximately 50 yards or less, depending on green setup and hole locations, players will transition to a custom-built complex called the “Green Zone.”
The Green Zone is four times the size of a regulation basketball court and will feature the largest-ever adaptable putting surface. It will also feature close to 200 actuators and jacks that will allow the green to change its slope, thus creating plenty of variety.
TGL will surely be unlike anything golf has ever seen before.
What are your thoughts on this new endeavor? Let us know in the comments below or @_PlayingThrough.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko for more golf coverage. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough too.
