If one is to take the hyperbole machine from ESPN at face value, something historic went down last night at a modest converted television studio in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Well, “historic” might just be an overstatement, but for an otherwise quiet midweek evening with scant little else of consequence going on in the sports world, there was at least enough excitement for CBS SPORTS’ Patrick McDonald to file this gushing report:
An inaugural TGL champion has been crowned. Following a dramatic victory in Match No. 1 on Monday night, Atlanta Drive GC carried the momentum over Match 2 on Tuesday and took care of New York Golf Club late, 4-3, for a two-match clean sweep in the best-of-three championship bout.
Trailing 3-0 after the opening session of triples, Atlanta clawed back into the match thanks to a methodical hammer approach in singles. Securing two conceded points courtesy of the hammer, Atlanta put everything on the line on the penultimate hole when Billy Horschel rose up to the moment against Rickie Fowler.
After New York accepted the hammer, Horschel connected on a downhill, double breaker from 18 feet — the longest putt he made all season — and absolutely lost it celebrating. The Florida Gators standout tossed his putter, spiked his hat, claimed eminent domain over the SoFi Center and sent the place into a frenzy all while grabbing two points as the Drive took the lead for the first time all night with one hole to play.
It sure sounded exciting, and I’ll confess this is one of the prettier putts I’ve seen in any golf venue, and Horschel’s visceral reaction clearly shows he was more than a little invested in the result.
INCREDIBLE‼️ pic.twitter.com/0X7ojbTDMX
— TGL (@TGL) March 26, 2025
Sure, there’s lots of money involved. It’s a passion project that started with golf’s arguable GOAT that has trickled into the kind of folks that these days seem to dominate the northern suburbs of South Florida, as GOLF’s Nick Piastowski opined in a season review piece he dropped last night:
What worked for me was the buy-in – from the business world. Tiger must have called up a lot of his friends because the list of investors is impressive, and there’ll be a trickle-down effect. They put their money in – and they’ll do what they do to see that it wasn’t lost in one of TGL’s hazard areas. It also turns heads – Serena Williams likes this? Mike Trout likes this? Might need to see what this is about.
And ESPN sure did its part. Its resident golf evangelist and arguably one of its three most popular personalities Scott Van Pelt showed up on site and willingly participated in the virtual fireworks which seemed to excite Piastowski’s debate partner Dylan Dethier quite a bit:
It’s golf in a stadium! Branding was always going to be a TGL challenge because “simulator golf” sounds lame as hell. But golf in an arena? Now you’re just a couple lions away from Ancient Rome and the gladiators… It’s fun. The tech is nuts. It’s a chance to see top pros in a different environment.
And Piastowski even confessed to some of his own effusion:
Specifically, the format allowed us closer to the personalities – Billy Horschel’s profile is at an all-time high – and that can only help the outdoor product, the “I loved him on TGL” effect could actually be a thing. What worked for me was the buy-in – from the business world. Tiger must have called up a lot of his friends because the list of investors is impressive, and there’ll be a trickle-down effect. They put their money in – and they’ll do what they do to see that it wasn’t lost in one of TGL’s hazard areas. It also turns heads – Serena Williams likes this? Mike Trout likes this? Might need to see what this is about.
But one of the downsides of being slightly more seasoned than the target audience this seems to be aimed at–aka Van Pelt’s unique late night demographic that hasn’t completely cut their cords–is that I vividly remember when the concept of moving something indoors that historically couldn’t have been conceived of being so staged was enough of a novelty to warrant attention, if for no other reason to simply see what it looked light.
I distinctly remember when at the peak of premature expansion of outdoor pro soccer in the US a group of ambitious entrepreneurs figured out a way to turn soccer into hockey by dropping a swath of Astroturf over an ice floor and created the Major Indoor Soccer League, lovingly referenced as the “Missile”. If you were in soccer-loving markets like St. Louis, San Diego and Long Island, you actually cared about who played in and won 10-9 matches where balls would frequently shatter arena board glass that were designed to absorb the impact of a rubber puck. It was perfect for TV, especially for the still-emergent cable networks both national and local that were hungry for live content. Yes, I watched plenty of New York Arrows matches, and so would you if you had to endure the non-competitiveness of early 80s Knicks and Nets teams. And you might recall that this eventually helped give birth to the Arena Football League, the “50-yard indoor war”. Yes, I confess that I actually went to several Los Angeles Avengers games back in the day when paying to see a live sports event was a far easier proposition for moi.
But once those leagues got past their first few years, while they continued to exist they were a shadow of what they started out as. Numerous franchises and re-iterations came and went with dizzying speed, practically the sports world equivalent of pop-up restaurants. Minor league hockey and basketball has exploded and have more than filled whatever void might have existed in these underserviced markets, and the big time arenas are for the most part doing just fine with corporate sponsorships, thank you.
So call me dubious if you will, but simply being worthy of curiosity sampling and a superior ratings alternative than the CIT semifinals that featured the likes of Florida Gulf Coast and Incarnate Word battling for a meaningless post-season tournament college basketball trophy isn’t quite enough to get me on this bandwagon.
But I do kind of fall in line with the final “verdicts” that GOLF’s answer to FIRST TAKE offered:
DD: On the whole, yes. TGL has worked. I’m glad it exists and I wasn’t sure that I’d feel that way at the beginning of the season.
NP: Agree. There was golf on a Monday and Tuesday. Let’s see if it can grow from that.
So I guess I’ll see you next winter, TGL. But don’t bet the house we’ll be saying that come 2030.
Courage…