Like never heard or seen before, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy introduced a unique and staggering format in the game of golf called TGL.
The concept backed by TMRW Sports and Woods-McIlroy’s brainchild has been scheduled to start in January 2025 after a year-long delay. Originally, TGL was supposed to start by January 2024. However, the 250,000-square-foot SoFi Center situated at Palm Beach State College collapsed on the night of November 14, 2023.
A power outage at the construction site deflated the air dome of the SoFi Center and destroyed the progress that had been made so far. However, after eight months of construction, the TGL SoFi Center has started taking shape. The latest tweet from NUCLR Golf reveals an aerial view of the half-done SoFi Center, which will no longer have the air-inflated dome but instead a solid foundation.
Some revenue complications were also the reason behind the delay in the tech-infused league. However, that problem with TGL has been solved too. After a funding round, TGL’s parent company, TMRW Sports’s valuation increased to nearly $500 million. Starting in 2025, TGL will surely not have any revenue problems as investors are heavily backing TMRW Sports.
As it seems, TGL is introducing a new perspective on the game of golf, which has never been done before. But is it the case though? Although golf has never been played just on screen and on such a big level, even then, the golf world didn’t welcome the concept with open arms and was skeptical of it all. Why? Well, the biggest criticism was about it eerily copying LIV Golf, which Woods had openly opposed.
Arguably, TGL might resemble the breakaway if a few of its aspects are compared. For instance, TGL and LIV Golf both have team gameplay with four golfers, and only the three best scores would be counted for the final cumulative score. But one vastly different thing is that LIV Golf team events are played on the golf course, whereas TGL would be a simulator golf league.
Another thing that the fans noticed about TGL resembling LIV Golf was the different team names. The tech-infused league has six teams, which are named after six different cities in America. Fans have called out TGL for copying LIV, as even naming the teams was kind of similar, and questioned Tiger Woods and all 24 TGL golfers’s intent, as many were against LIV Golf’s format.
Although certain things from TGL are similar to LIV Golf, it should be noted that from format to rules and gameplay, everything differs. Thus, it can be assumed that TGL does not resemble the breakaway circuit at all. Regardless, TGL had quite an impressive start compared to LIV Golf. After all, the league already has ESPN backing it up for broadcasting and is PGA Tour-supported as well.
With many interested in seeing Woods’s concept come to life, it would be delightful to see how TGL will perform when it starts in 2025.
