TGL Superlatives
TGL Season 1 Superlatives: The MVP, the most memorable moment and the burning billion-dollar question
Megan Briggs/TGL
Welcome to Tomorrow Golf League TODAY. Each week until the end of TGL’s inaugural season, we will meet here to recap the physical, virtual and physical-virtual action from the world’s most-hyped professional simulator golf league. But this isn’t any old play-by-play. No, no. That requires too much writing. Instead, we will break down the week’s season's winners and losers via the most scientific form of analysis known to humanity: Superlatives.
It seems like just yesterday we met here to make sense of the first TGL match in human history, a 9-2 walloping of New York Golf Club by The Bay. Fast-forward three months, and the seafoam swingers were watching from the couch as Xander, Rickie and Co. pushed Atlanta Drive Golf Club all the way in the TGL Finals. They grow up so fast, don’t they?
In the end, Atlanta Drive—led by the odd throuple of Billy Horschel, Justin Thomas and Patrick Cantlay—prevailed, simultaneously lifting the SoFi Cup and closing the curtain on TGL’s inaugural season. So who were the biggest winners and most likable losers over the course of the campaign? What worked, what didn’t and how can the league continue to reinvent not only itself, but pro golf? Settle in as we explore these questions, pat some backs and offer a few shoulders to cry on. It’s been a longggg short season, especially for us aging golf writers who don't like staying up much past 10 p.m., but we’d lying if we said we didn’t have a lot of fun along the way.
Most Valuable Player: Billy Horschel
There are two schools of thought here:
1. The head — The head says TGL’s Most Valuable Player this season is Wyndham Clark. The stats support the head. The 2023 U.S. Open champ won the most points of all players (26) throughout the season, was top-three in all driving metrics and was the most accurate out of the sand.
2. The heart — The heart watched Billy Horschel catch fire like 2007 Eli Manning in the playoffs, practically willing Atlanta Drive to the SoFi Cup. Horschel won the most singles holes and points all season (6 and 9) and came up huge in the Finals, draining birdie putts of 11 and 17 feet to cap comebacks in the singles portions of both matches.
Most importantly, Billy was the pulse of Atlanta Drive from the word go, announcing himself to the SoFi Center crowd by doing the Dirty Bird while wearing a giant “ATL” chain back in January. This week, he could be seen gliding across the green like Julie Andrews after a few too many Red Bulls following his clutch match-winning putts. Best of all, TGL gave golf fans a closer look at Horschel the human, and almost everyone liked what they saw.
The competitive fire we usually only got to see when it boiled over on the PGA Tour, was cast in a very different light this season. Thanks to the all-access broadcast and team dynamic, we learned there’s a lot more to Horschel than meets the eye (a sense of humor and fashion, for starters). We also learned that Horschel’s intense competitive spirit stems from a desire to win not just for himself, but for every one—family, friends, teammates—around him. For that reason and plenty more we’re probably forgetting, Billy Horschel has earned the right to be named TGL’s first-ever MVP.
Most Disappointing: Tiger and Rory
Make no mistake, TGL was Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s baby, and as legal guardians, they did a fine job. The league’s debut season went off without a major hitch, drew some solid ratings and gained just enough steam to make even the golf traditionalists sit up and take notice. As parents of the infant league, however, Woods and McIlory were disastrous.
The reasons for that aren’t entirely their fault—Woods suffered the loss of his mother mid-season and McIlroy is laser-focused on winning PGA Tour titles/majors this year—but they were derelict in their playground duties throughout the season.
Both Jupiter Links GC and Boston Common Golf missed the playoffs, and neither Woods nor McIlroy, the two biggest names in modern golf, seemed to care all that much. Woods’ game was simply not in competitive shape, and McIlroy had that resigned, apathetic look he gets when he seems to accept defeat long before it actually happens. A strong summer, which McIlroy jumpstarted by winning the Players Championship earlier this month, may energize the Ballfrogs captain next season but Woods is a much bigger question mark. Many people believed, perhaps wishfully, that the main thing holding Woods back was his struggle to walk 72 holes. The relatively stationary TGL setup proved the problems run much deeper than that, and with a recent Achilles tear now added to his laundry list of injuries, there’s no telling when, or if, Woods will tee it up for Jupiter Links again.
Funniest Moment: Hosel rocket man
In a twist of irony fit for an indoor golf league located in sunny southern Florida, the most memorable moment of TGL’s debut season came in a blowout with nothing on the line. That’s when Kevin Kisner locked in and came alive.
Kisner’s game looked even more undercooked than Woods’ throughout much of the season, but no lowlight delivered a bigger highlight than his Week 2 hosel-rocket-to-the-stars, which mercifully smacked the flagstick at the speed of sound instead of embedding in one of his teammate’s eye sockets. As the entire arena reflexively ducked, Woods broke into tears of laughter, unable to catch his breath as cameras and mics captured every detail of the eerily relatable scene. Most golf fans have never and will never see Woods that giggly ever again and thus is the magic of Kiz the Wiz.
Most Improved: The Hammer
New York Golf Club deserves a nod after starting the season 1-3 before somehow fighting back to make TGL Finals, but the single most improved element of TGL’s first season was the Hammer. Through the first few weeks of the season, the fan-favorite gauntlet was shared between both teams, allowing the leading team to simply stash it and play keep away.
To TGL’s credit, however, the league changed the Hammer rules on the fly, giving both teams three Hammers each to use at their discretion while adding a hole-forfeit penalty for denying an opponent’s Hammer. The new rules quickly transformed the Hammer from an afterthought to a weapon, and it became an essential tool down the stretch as Atlanta Drive used it to come from behind in the singles portions of both their final matches. Kudos to TGL for acting fast while the proverbial concrete was still wet … now let’s just hope the PGA Tour takes a page out of its sibling’s yardage book and does something about slow play …
Most Potential: Inviting the ladies
Let’s be honest, at this point TGL is still largely about potential. By most expectations, the league’s first season was a success, but with its own $50 million arena, ESPN broadcast deal and owners like Steve Cohen and Serena Williams, it’s clear the long-term ambitions are much greater. There are many ways TGL could break through golf’s glass ceiling and transcend its niche, but Atlanta Drive owner Arthur Blank floated the most interesting a few weeks back:
The inclusion of female golfers.
Imagine Nelly Korda and Rory McIlroy teaming side-by-side. Imagine Charley Hull hitting a vape pen before smoking a drive down the middle of the fairway. Imagine Rose Zhang—now a minority owner of The Bay Golf Club—rediscovering her phenom form or Lydia Ko enjoying a well-deserved victory lap. As Caitlin Clark has proved, there’s plenty of appetite for women’s sports when they are platformed. TGL, especially if it can find a way to make a professional mixed-gender competition work, finds itself in a unique position to capitalize moving forward. Here’s hoping they don’t screw it up.
Work in Progress: Scheduling
Like all upstart sports leagues, TGL is at the mercy of television. Just ask LIV Golf how that’s working out for them. Still, the 3 p.m. Monday afternoon tee time on ESPN 2 needs to be taken behind the shed and put out of its misery. It’s not even worth the cost of turning on the lights at the SoFi Center. In fact, TGL would probably be better off streaming those matches for free in a better timeslot on its own website, and that’s saying something.
The constraints of ESPN’s schedule weren’t the only logistical hurdles TGL faced this season, however. The Bay Golf Club went five full weeks between their first and second matches and then one full hour between their second and third. Tony Finau and Nick Dunlap both signed one-day contracts to fill in for Los Angeles and Atlanta despite TGL teams carrying a backup player to field in the case of an absence. The last time we saw Justin Rose tee it up was Feb. 17. If the PGA Tour wants fans to take its partner league seriously, they need to make sure the players do the same.
The Billion-Dollar Question: Still unanswered ...
Is simulator golf a spectator sport? That was the massive question TGL needed to answer heading into its inaugural campaign. Sitting here, three-and-a-half months later, the jury is still sequestered. We’re more optimistic than we were after Week 2, when rough play and big blowouts hoovered all the excitement out of the SoFi Center. At that point, I wrote the following:
“TGL can hype up the size of their simulator screen all they want, but the fact is, it’s still just a screen. And as it turns out, watching a digitally rendered golf ball soar through virtual air on a screen within your TV screen just isn’t that compelling. It lacked oomph and impact—that tactile feeling the best golf broadcasts can give us. The bland simulator visuals, especially the empty grandstands on 'The Spear,' as our own Chris Powers pointed out, didn’t help either.”
In the weeks that followed, the play became more competitive, thanks in part to players working out the eccentricities of the simulator tech and The Hammer rule changes producing closer matches. That helped compensate for the sterile experience of watching a plain white golf ball rendered in PS2-era graphics take three stiff hops off a lava lake and settle unnaturally on the side of a deep swale. But will it be enough over the long-term? Is the premise simply flawed?
Interestingly, as the season progressed, TGL gained traction with core golf fans—the sickos, the hardos, the bettors, the nerds—who tuned in to watch the world’s best pros navigate the unique challenges posed by the technology and format. How would natural fade hitters compensate for the technology’s inability to track their preferred shot shape? The swing geeks were dying to find out.
That’s a positive outcome, but it’s not exactly the intended one. TGL, with its snappy shot clock, two-hour format, loud music, mic’d-up players and shiny ESPN production, is designed to cater to the golf casual. It was meant to be a golf gateway drug but, so far at least, it’s still the same old addicts buying it. For now, that’s probably enough, but in professional golf’s fractured modern world, is there really bandwidth to support a fourth major professional men’s golf tour? Who knows what the future holds, but golf’s history provides more questions than answers.