Shane Lowry’s Mistake at TGL’s First Event
When the first season of TGL began at the SoFi Center last week, Shane Lowry from Ireland forgot to bring a tee to the hitting area, missing the chance to hit the first drive in the history of the new tech-focused golf league.
This was one of the lighter moments of TGL’s opening night, which mostly delivered on its promises: team golf played on the biggest simulator in the world, set in a cutting-edge facility.
TGL is expected to draw even more attention on Tuesday night when Tiger Woods and his Jupiter Links GC team face off against Collin Morikawa and the Los Angeles Golf Club (7 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN+).
The opening night marked the result of more than eight years of work by TMRW Sports CEO Mike McCarley, Woods, Rory McIlroy, and others who helped get TGL started.
McCarley spent over 20 years at NBC Sports, starting with “Sunday Night Football” and the Olympics, then becoming president of Golf Channel and leading its golf coverage from 2011 to 2021.
It was during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro that McCarley first came up with the idea of making golf a team sport.
“What you found yourself doing in the four years in between Olympics is spending a lot of time with various sports because they want to find out how they could better present themselves on TV four years later,” McCarley said. “You’re helping them find little things that a sport can do better on TV.”
While in charge of NBC’s golf coverage, McCarley noticed that U.S. Open broadcasts on the West Coast, which aired in prime time on the East Coast, had huge TV ratings. He also saw that team events like the Presidents Cup, Solheim Cup, and Ryder Cup created more excitement and drama than individual tournaments.
“They’re on a team, so they’re having more conversations with each other,” McCarley said. “They’re having real reactions with each other that they wouldn’t have in an individual event. The team nature of it and the prime-time piece of it intensifies the drama.”
In 2020, McCarley wanted to create a golf environment that “feels a little bit like gladiators walking into the Coliseum, and a little bit more of a pressure cooker because there’s a shot clock.”
How TGL Got Its Start
McCarley’s first pitch for TGL was made to the biggest name in men’s professional golf, 15-time major champion Tiger Woods, in December 2020. McCarley had discussed the idea with Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, and longtime business partner Rob McNamara.
McCarley knew that Woods had used a golf simulator at his home to prepare for tournaments throughout his PGA Tour career, so he was familiar with the technology.
Another advantage was that Woods had played in the PGA Tour’s Skins Game six times and had appeared in the first two versions of The Match, another made-for-TV competition.
“There was definitely an order to it,” McCarley said. “First go to Tiger, then Rory, then the PGA Tour, and that was kind of always in my mind.”
With Woods on board, McCarley called Rory McIlroy in January 2021. A few years earlier, they had worked together to launch GolfPass, a program combining instruction, entertainment, and digital media.
McCarley had often discussed with McIlroy and his manager, Sean O’Flaherty, the idea of “embracing technology to kind of create this digital future for golf.”
“I knew that Rory was halfway there in his mind,” McCarley said. “In the phone call, we weren’t even very far into it, and he’s like, ‘I don’t even know what this is yet, and I’m ready to say yes, because it’s kind of hitting on so many themes.'”
McCarley’s Final Challenge: Getting PGA Tour Approval
McCarley’s last major challenge was getting approval from the PGA Tour to allow its members to compete in TGL. In April 2021, he met with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan. At that time, there were rumors that two-time Open Championship winner Greg Norman was trying to create a competing breakaway league. It wouldn’t be until 14 months later that LIV Golf would hold its first tournament in London, with Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and other former PGA Tour members playing.
McCarley assured Monahan that TGL events would take place early in the week and wouldn’t conflict with PGA Tour events. The PGA Tour agreed to allow its members to participate in TGL, something it did not do for LIV Golf, and became a TGL partner.
How the PGA Tour Helped TGL’s Technology
According to McCarley, the PGA Tour’s support was crucial in developing TGL’s technology because it provided his company with historical Shotlink data. This data helped “make sure that we’re one standard deviation away from all the most common misses.”
“Using a lot of the historical data helped us develop some of the very basic early renderings and schematics that we could hand off to architects and other technologists,” McCarley explained.
Building TGL’s Technology
By October 2022, TMRW Sports had installed a full swing simulator and virtual green in a warehouse at its headquarters in Winter Park, Florida. A trip to Stockholm, Sweden, the following month helped move TGL into the next phase.
Andrew Macaulay, who was then the chief technology officer at Topgolf Entertainment Group, set up a temporary screen at an indoor golf range in Stockholm and rented a projector for the week. McCarley and other TGL employees watched the event on Zoom as a Swedish long-drive champion hit shots into the screen from 35 yards away. The video call included people from 16 different time zones, from New Zealand to Hawai’i.
Afterward, McCarley and Scott Armstrong, TMRW Sports’ vice president for competition technology and operations, flew to Sweden to see the setup in person. Macaulay even arranged for sand to be dumped in the middle of the driving range so McCarley and Armstrong could see how bunker shots would be tracked on the simulator.
“There were a lot of discussions, PowerPoint slides, back-of-the-napkin [ideas] and all the usual stuff,” Macaulay said. “But no one up to that point had actually created a really quick prototype in real life for him, which is what we did to try to convince him that our idea was the way to go.”
Macaulay Joins TMRW Sports
Macaulay was hired as TMRW Sports’ chief technology officer in December 2022. He and others began working on developing the technology for the world’s largest golf simulator and a state-of-the-art short game course to go with it.
Challenges and Innovations with TGL’s GreenZone
TGL went through many trials early on. Initially, the plan was to use natural grass on the GreenZone short game area. The goal was ambitious: nearly 600 actuators would change the green’s shape between holes, ensuring that each putting surface was unique. TGL brought in a truckload of Tahoma 31 Bermuda grass, which was developed by scientists at Oklahoma State University, from a sod farm that supplies playing fields to teams like the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs.
“We were concerned about water penetration to the electronics,” said Tanner Coffman, TGL’s director of turf management. “The turf for a football field we were using was fine, but I think when we got down to a really closely mown putting green, it would have cracked over time.”
Instead of using natural grass, TGL decided to use synthetic turf for the GreenZone, which presented its own challenges. The goal was to make sure the golf balls would still bounce and spin like they would on real grass. TGL designers eventually placed the green on a moving turntable, which added variety for each match.
Developing the Short Game Course
Armstrong spent time at short-game instructor Dave Pelz’s backyard in Austin, Texas, where synthetic grass covers his practice area, including reproductions of famous holes like the 12th green at Augusta National, the Road Hole at St. Andrews in Scotland, and the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass.
TGL developers tested hundreds of combinations of materials that could replace the dirt and organic matter found under real putting greens. They eventually settled on seven layers of foam, rubber, and plexiglass. Macaulay wouldn’t share the exact materials under the synthetic turf because TGL has a pending patent on it.
“We’ve created something that didn’t exist before, which is a green that is both receptive to pitch and chip shots,” Macaulay said. “When that ball bounces and rolls, it behaves very similarly to a real green and it putts true. If you were to want a putting green for your backyard, chances are you’d only get one or the other.”
TGL’s New Stadium
TGL broke ground on a new stadium with a domed roof at Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, in February 2023.
