TGL, the indoor team golf league backed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, has announced its full schedule. The six-team league, made up of two dozen PGA Tour players, will debut in early January on ESPN in the midst of the NFL playoffs, and will run weekly through late March.
The league will begin on Tuesday nights with team golf competitions running for about two hours. The matches will be played at the SoFi Center, a facility in Palm Beach Gardens specifically built to host both the high-tech golf simulator, screen and greens as well as about 1,500 live fans, in seats and suites.
The season will include 15 regular-season matches, a four-team playoff, and a two-team best-of-three championship. Each match will be 15 holes — nine of team play, six of singles match play.
TGL’s game play involves a combination of screen technology for “drives” and an actual, adjustable green for approaches and putting. TGL designers have created 30 holes, and will use 15 of them for any given match.
The six teams are aligned with various cities and owned by various owners and ownership groups from other sports, like the Mets’ Steve Cohen, the Falcons Arthur Blank, the Red Sox’ Fenway Sports Group and others.
The league will begin on Tuesday, Jan. 7 with New York Golf Club (Matt Fitzpatrick, Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele and Cameron Young) against Bay Golf Club (Ludvig Åberg, Wyndham Clark, Min Woo Lee and Shane Lowry). On Jan. 14, Jupiter Links Golf Club (Woods, Max Homa, Tom Kim and Kevin Kisner) will play Los Angeles Golf Club (Collin Morikawa, Sahith Theegala, Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Rose). Later in the season, Atlanta Drive GC (Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Billy Horschel and Lucas Glover) and Boston Common GC (McIlroy, Keegan Bradley, Adam Scott and Hideki Matsuyama) will debut.
McIlroy and Woods, through their joint venture TMRW Sports, first announced the league in August 2022, at the most acrimonious point in the PGA Tour-LIV Golf divide. LIV Golf’s hallmark is team golf, and outside of the Ryder Cup and certain match-play events, there’s no substantial team golf component to PGA Tour golf.
TGL has a fully fleshed-out web and social presence, along with explanatory videos and merch, designed to create instant branding alignment based on fans’ connection with both specific players and “host” cities. The league was scheduled to begin play earlier in 2024, but a storm damaged the facility and forced a year-long delay.
The league’s playoffs will run into late March, ending just weeks before the Masters and the start of golf’s major season.
