About TGL Golf
TGL (Tomorrow's Golf League) is a new, innovative golf league founded by golf superstars Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, in partnership with sports executive Mike McCarley.
The league is designed to modernize and revolutionize golf by blending traditional play with cutting-edge technology and primetime entertainment.
TGL Golf Key Features:
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Technology-Driven Format: TGL combines virtual and live-action golf. Players will hit real shots into giant high-tech screens and transition to live short-game areas for putting and chipping. This hybrid format creates a fast-paced and engaging experience.
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Team-Based Competition: The league features six teams, each made up of three PGA Tour players. Unlike traditional golf, which is primarily individual-based, TGL focuses on team dynamics and strategy.
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Primetime Schedule: Matches will be held on Monday nights in a custom-built arena, offering a unique primetime viewing experience to engage younger and broader audiences.
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State-of-the-Art Venue: TGL events will take place at a purpose-built venue with cutting-edge technology to deliver an immersive experience for both live and broadcast audiences.
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Player-Backed Ownership: Several teams are backed by prominent athletes and investors. For example, franchises have been purchased by owners like Serena Williams, Steph Curry, and Fenway Sports Group, bringing cross-sport appeal.
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Launch Timeline: Originally set to launch in 2024, TGL postponed its inaugural season to 2025 due to construction delays in their specialized arena in Florida.
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Partnership with the PGA Tour: TGL is officially partnered with the PGA Tour, giving it access to the world's top golfers while complementing traditional tour events.
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Fan Engagement Focus: The league aims to engage a younger, tech-savvy audience with a more interactive and entertaining golf experience, addressing the need for faster and more dynamic sports content.
TGL is set to redefine how fans watch and experience golf by merging traditional athleticism with innovative technology and a fan-first approach.
Chubby Chandler On TGL Golf
What did you make of TGL Golf?
I can’t believe it. I actually made a plan to be awake at 2am to watch that.
I was completely open-minded. I had no idea whether I was going to really like it or really hate it and I think the public have missed the point of what it is.
And the point of what it is is paying 20 top guys instead of LIV Golf. That’s what it is.
However they dress it up, they’re giving all these top players the money because they’ve not gone to LIV.
It’s all about putting cash in their pockets. I don’t know how much they will have paid all these guys but to get them to fly out to Orlando for a night in the middle of their schedules, it ain’t going to be cheap.
They’re going there for a lot of money to stop them being with LIV, to say thank you for not going with LIV.
If TGL is supposed to make golf the new darts or be golf’s version of T20 then it is a failure
It was embarrassingly bad. They paid people to be in the crowd. That’s bollocks. How many do you think get paid to go to darts? It’s supposed to be the same idea.
I was on nights all last week and I watched nearly every ball of Australia vs India. It was absolutely fantastic. Best thing I’ve ever seen. Better than the Ashes. Better than anything. It was so intense. Unbelievable.
There’s three forms of cricket but two main forms — white ball and red ball. Nobody’s suffered from it. Test cricket is unbelievable. That fourth test in Australia had 354,000 people over five days.
I thought TGL was very poor and the other thing I don’t understand, and someone will have an answer to it — these projectors, these simulators, they’ve got better and better.
But they haven’t managed to work out how to portray the ball landing and rolling, so when it bounces and then it rolls it looks ridiculous, doesn’t it. There will be a technical reason why they haven’t managed to do it, but they haven’t managed to do it.
TGL has made the same mistake that LIV have
I think that is where LIV missed a trick. The team event at LIV should have had women in it, then it would have looked like a team event, but it never looked like a team event because they just had four players playing an individual tournament and added the scores together.
If you’d had a South African team with Louis Oosthuizen, Dean Burmester, the top women’s player like Ashleigh Buhai, and Ernie Els that would be quite an interesting team.
I think TGL have probably missed the same thing, but that’s why it is money for the boys. Why wouldn’t you have Charlie Hull, otherwise? Charlie Hull would be more entertaining than all the other players on Tuesday night, so long as they made it not a non-smoking area. She would have been brilliant on it.
To get 24 top players, it’s just to compensate them for not being with LIV. If you want to be entertaining, have entertainers there or your celebrities like Samuel L Jackson, Michael Jordan or influencers like Paige Spiranac. With most golfers, it’s a toss up who is most boring. You won’t find many one-liners from them.
You either have one or the other. You can’t have both. The entertainment golfers give you is hitting the shots that no one else can. That’s why you get 10,000 people watching every move that Rory makes a golf tournament, because no one can play like Rory.
Benefits to players and their game?
Oh no, there’s no benefits to their game. It’s all just cash.
The chipping and putting was what it was. It was what it looked like. When you’re on an artificial green, that’s what happens. They can’t make it real enough.
Are you suddenly going to get a different set of players who are better at simulator golf? No. The same basic talent needed to play a simulator is the same as the talent to play real golf.
The bunkers, they’re all flat. I wonder why they couldn’t build lips and revette them. Some of it you look at and you are left questioning why it is like that.
Anyway, time will tell. It’ll be very interesting in 10 weeks time or whatever it is.
Woe betide any of them say they’re tired though and they’re all going to suddenly say they’re tired after flying around the country playing synthetic golf for two hours, and they must be getting paid plenty.
The players like Tiger, Rory aren’t interesting enough — they aren’t entertainers
At the end of the day, they’ve put this thing together to show another side of the players, but that side is not very interesting.
They’re talking about them being entertainers, and they are magnificent entertainers — but how do they entertain us? They hit golf shots better than you or I or a lot of other people. That’s the way they entertain us. They don’t entertain us by cracking jokes.
Tiger didn’t crack a joke for 20 years when he was winning every week. He almost didn't smile. He now thinks he’s an entertainer. He’s got his headphones on, he thinks he’s cool doing this and that and the other.
The audience looked bewildered rather than entertained
For me, it didn’t hit the mark. Obviously, I’m in a different position to most people because I’ve seen a lot of stuff from the other side but I’m not sure it needed everything like that. If you look back at the tapes of it, the crowd are looking bewildered because they don’t know what was going on.
You’ve got Ricky Fowler trying to be funny dropping his putter on Shane Lowry’s lay. Well that’s hilarious, not! If you were going to do that, would you not have John Daly on? Would you not have Danny Barker?
I hate this is coming out of my mouth but wouldn't you have a bunch of YouTubers on that are used to hamming it up and whatever? And maybe hitting a 360-yard drive. What about having someone like Paige Spiranac on? She’d be brilliant.
Shot clock
We’ve had a shot clock, and it worked. We had it for two years, didn’t they. But the players don’t like it. They don’t want to play any faster.
There’s so much player power now that I wouldn’t know what would happen. This wouldn’t have happened in Dean Beman’s day, would it. He wouldn't have allowed it to happen. It’s now run by three or four players. Europe just slots into that. If Europe had any balls they’d be with LIV by now. They’ve missed a trick. A big trick.
Walk out music etc for PGA based off what could be working for TGL?
Mic’d up is a funny thing, isn’t it. The golf person, you’d think it is to entertain people but they’re actually mic’d up so the golf nerds can hear what they’re saying. The golf nerd wants to hear it’s 181 to the flag, it’s 167 over that trap, the wind is a bit off the right — that’s what the gold nerd wants to listen to, they don’t want to be entertained. That is the entertainment. The guys are not entertainers as in song and dance, they’re entertainers by being skilful as they are.
Does golf even need to court a younger audience?
I hope I’m not being too critical of it but I don’t think it. People are missing why it’s on at all. Yes, it’s for a younger audience but do we need a younger audience? Are we competing with too many things to get a younger audience?
At the end of the day they should actually not worry too much about the young people. Young people will work it out. They’ll either want to play golf or they won’t want to play golf, and if they want to play Top Golf — which a lot do because Top Golfs are busy — they go to Top Golf, fine. Take the balls, have a few pints, nothing wrong with it.
Tiger, Cantlay and Rory have made golf vulgar and it’s getting worse with TGL
Tiger and Rory have got the investment in it. They are who they are. Cantlay is running the tour.
You’ve got the lunatics running the asylum and it’s not good is it. Their business acumen doesn’t match their golf acumen.
The same day it was launched, the TGL, they announced the PIP payments. It’s vulgar isn’t it. Tiger played four times, five times. What did they give him? £10 million or more.
What is going on? What does it look like to the man on the street now? It looks like a load of greedy billionaires trying to cash in, cash in, cash in.
When you get an NFL quarterback getting paid £30 million a year for five years, they talk about it when they sign the contract and you never hear about it again. It all disappears.
Golf keeps resurfacing about money. It’s all about the money all of the time. I worry about it. Does the young kid who wants to be a PGA player, does he want to be a simulator player? No.
What does it do to Rory and Tiger’s brands?
I would think that Tiger’s is never going to be as big as it was. Rory’s is never going to be as big as it was. Possibly no golfer again will get to where Rory and Tiger were because I don’t think you can build the brand in the same way as they could.
Golf’s future is a concern
I worry about golf completely. I don’t think anybody understands where it’s at.
It’s getting overtaken by greedy golfers and I don’t want it to sound like sour grapes because I haven’t got it in me. I had a great run for 20 years and made good money. I just look at it as a punter who knows more than most.
Green fees have gone crazy. That’s taking it back 20 years when young people couldn't play either.
I got sent an offer and they did four outings and one of them was lunch and a round on the new and the old at Sunningdale in one day, and one of them was lunch and a game at St George’s Hill. Number one, they were nearly the same price which to me was amazing, but lunch and a round of golf at St George’s Hill was £475! It’s just bonkers.
It was £500 for two rounds and lunch with a bacon butty at Sunningdale. It was so expensive. It’s a grand at Turnbury and a grand at Old Head. They’re not catering for me and you are they? It is mental and all I ever see is loads of courses closing. Loads of courses are closing all the time.
PGA vs LIV
There’s nobody trying very hard to sort it out. It’s not that difficult to sort. If you’re going to sort it you’d play the whole of LIV from September onwards around the world — you’d have four in America the rest in Korea, Australia, England, Spain. Not that difficult.
But if you look at it all it’s not that difficult to sort so there must not be too much appetite to sort it, so why would there be? All the LIV players are now earning a lot more. All the PGA players are now earning a lot more — or at least all the ones that they care for.
Do you think in a meeting with Tiger, Rory and Cantlay that No. 100 in the world comes up? No.
How to fix LIV vs PGA once and for all
Why on earth don't they let LIV get on with it, let LIV be LIV and let the Tour be the Tour, and stop trying to match all the money because it’s going to bust everybody. Let them go off in different directions.
LIV have paid the penalty for no world ranking points and no Majors. They’ve paid their penalties. It doesn’t have to be all out war now. Just get on with it. The four Majors will just go bigger and bigger and bigger, because that will be the only time all the good players play together, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.
LIV next talent
Look at what’s going on. If you think about it, you just don’t know what’s going on. Tom McKibbin is signing with LIV on Tuesday.
They’ve offered him quite a lot. He comes from a background of absolutely nothing.
I don't know what he’ll be on. I have no idea because some of the figures at the beginning were wrong. The reports that they offered £75million for Rory wasn’t right and apparently, Ian Poulter didn’t get as much as he was supposed to have done.
But if they’re offering McKibbin £15million over three years and you’ve come from a family that did not have everything it’s quite hard to turn that down.
It’s a funny one when you’re a young kid and all your life all you’ve wanted to do is get a PGA tour card, gets a PGA tour, you get a half a million just for getting it, and then to do that, it has to be about money in the family. It’s a smack in the face for Rory.
Maybe Graeme McDowell is more persuasive than Rory these days.
You can’t bank your sporting ambition. You just can’t do it. I don’t know who is managing him and guiding him but if you were laying all the cards down at the table and they were offering £5million a year, in three year’s time the world could look completely different.
Players can take the LIV money now and still play PGA given how the sport is going to go
McKibbin might be pocketing the cash and then end up back where he was. If Rory signed to LIV right now, he’d be back to normal in a year’s time.
LIV TV deal is good
I think it’s good that LIV have got a TV deal because at least then it’s going to be easily exposed to everybody and people then will make their mind up instead of having to find it. I”m not saying LIV is the be all and end all either but what it has do is bring a load of new money into the game and opened the game up.
The Masters
The Masters aren’t stupid. They want the best field there but I don’t know how Hojgaard gets in. He is a good player by the way but he hits it 10 miles further than any of them. Looks like a choir boy though.
I think if Scotty Scheffler gets the glass out of his hands then he wins because it’s the perfect golf course for him. The best starting player, probably the best chipper, drives it straight, great attitude, wins by five.
But the Masters is a really good test because they’ll all get together and the viewing figures will be meaningful. The viewing figures will be 20% down and then you’ll suddenly have everyone panicking because Tiger’s not playing, unless he does play!
Look at the viewing figures for the father and sons thing. The thing is no one has replaced him. They haven’t found someone who wins 10 tournaments a year with the lifestyle off the course to match. They haven’t found them.
This is sport. There’s less and less characters in sport. It doesn’t matter what sport it is. Football, cricket — there’s more money, it’s more intense and everyone is better trained.
The Masters will be a fantastic test to see what’s going on. Until then we won’t know, will we.
Rory’s place in history
He’s probably behind Seve Ballesteros as the greatest golfer Europe has ever produced.
I don’t think he’ll catch Seve because Seve started Europe as a golf brand. He set it all off. But he is definitely the best after Seve.
If we won a couple more majors he would go above Seve, maybe.
Rory is the best player in the world. He’s the best in the world right now. He’s just short of a couple of nuts and bolts.
Rory may never realise his true potential
He’s still the best player there, better than Scheffler and Schauffele. He addresses his game all the time and he needs to work on this and that but genuinely he is an unbelievable striker but he’s not got the ability to finish like the other guys and does he learn that now at his age? Maybe not.
That was an unbelievable chance in the US Open. You wouldn’t actually want him to go through a similar situation hoping for a different outcome now. If he wins, he wins by a stick.
Rory’s fatal flaws holding him back
There’s two frailties to Rory: his short putting and his game management. And it’s his game management because he is very stubborn and doesn’t want to listen to anybody.
That club selection on 18, the driver when he’d hit three wood all week, and he hit the driver into the shit, it was a madness.
I feel sorry for him. To be as good as he is, and when you saw him pitched up in the score room watching on telly, I felt sick for him. He’s there thinking ‘what have I done?’
Ryder Cup
I think the Ryder Cup will be a tie. Europe will nearly win it. I think Donald is such a good captain that I think we’ll nearly win it but I wouldn’t be surprised if we did win it. I’m only saying a tie to be different!
For Europe, I think we’ve seen just about everybody who’s got on the team. I think you could name 18 people and get 12 right. The new guys that have come into that 18 are very good. I’m not sure how good the next fringe is.
The US team, taking payment for the Ryder Cup, that’s fucking lunatic Cantlay again and Tiger. There’s nothing like making yourself look greedy. When they make all these statements do they ever think about how they look saying it? It’s just staggering.
Who makes these decisions? Who actually takes themselves out of the bubble and looks at what they’re doing. If you wanted to make yourself look crass, you’d do exactly what they do. It’s the same as TGL golf. It’s all the same people, and Tiger is not short of a bob or two. When he’s got as much as he has, why is he getting involved on how much they should get paid? What’s all that about?
It would be the worst thing for Europe if they went down that path now after what they’ve all said. I don’t think anyone begrudges them getting £100k to go to charity but at the end of the day you can’t have that, and everything Rory’s said and what Shane Lowry said, and then say you want paying. You can’t have that.
Tiger in the Majors
Would Tiger make any difference? For me, someone like him should go out at the top, not the bottom. I don’t want to see Tiger like this. I remember Tiger when he won the US Open by 18 and the British Open by 15 or whatever it is.
I now don’t want to watch him battle round. I don’t think it does his brand any good, him any good and doesn’t do any of those watching him any good.
If he was 60 going round hitting 76, because he was old, fine. But he’s knackered. He still can’t walk properly, can he?
But no one is rolling Tiger out. Tiger still wants to be at the forefront of everything he can be still. He wants to now run the PGA Tour because he can’t win the PGA Tour.
Charlie Woods
I can see him turning pro. I don’t know how good he’ll be. He’s not bad. He’s obviously very good but you have to be very very good and I would think being Tiger’s son is not that easy. It might be easier being Tiger’s daughter and just being a person and not being everything everyone thinks he should be.
Hopefully his dad will watch, that’ll put the crowds up and he’ll be offered wildcard invitations to tournaments, and he deserves a wildcard. He will get those invitations. It could be harsh on the lad and it’s hard to play on an invitation even if you’re not Tiger’s son.
There’s an inherent pressure, a different pressure, once you’re invited to play in a tournament. And then to get that invitation for being Tiger’s son, that’s even more difficult.
Looking ahead into 2025
There’s so many young guys coming round now. I’ve had a bet this week on the golf and I’ve backed a guy, Frank Capla and there’s a guy in the odds who is 33/1 in a tournament last week who I’ve never heard of. It’s quite amazing that Corn Ferry throws up a lot of good players as does the American College System so it’s getting harder and harder to be a good player in the game.
Scheffler will win the Masters.
The US PGA is at Quail Hollow, so that would be Rory. Good course.
The US Open is at Oakmont. That’s for Xander. Suits his game. Proper US Major course.
The Open is at Portrush. It depends how windy it’s going to be. Tommy Fleetwood will go close a lot but whether he wins anything, I don’t know. If you watch him, I don’t think he putts well enough. We never seem to see him holding any puts, do we. I think Hatton could win something though so put me down for Hatton. He’s alright. He’s got a Major in him somewhere.
It would be interesting to see if I get any right.
I’d like to see Rory win a Major. Seeing him sat in that scoring room looking up at the screen was horrific. When he hit it four feet past on the 18th, you knew it turned more than he thought.
Did you reach out to Rory? Did you want to put an arm round him?
No. Not really. I just think somebody of his talent shouldn’t have to do that all the time and also we forget that Bryson upped and downed it from 50 yards to make it worse. I think he’s good for the game, Bryson.
I just wish somehow they’d come together a bit and sort it out because it seems a shame, and I don’t know if there is animosity but friction between the two, and a lot of it is whipped up. It’s more ego on one side than the other. It’s the ego of the lunatics. The shame of it is that Jay Monahan is a puppet. There’s no leadership so you’ve got a bunch of players who’ve decided they can lead it, but they don’t have the acumen to do it.
I don’t know how long this TGL can go on for. Don’t you think it’s like how we never see people criticising the top guys, never, because they’re terrified they’ll never speak to them again. It’s only muppets like me who’ll say how it is.
Trevino
Lee Trevino. He was an entertainer. He was an underdog. He was better than all of them. And he’s still a very cool 85-year-old. He can still hit a ball as well.
I played with him in the mid-80s at Woburn. Small guy. Very wide. I bet he had a 45-inch waist! He was so good.
Trump
I’ve played with Donald Trump three times. He was alright. I played with him and he said he was seven and he was probably nine. He’s decent. Can hit it quite far, and he would have been 71 back then. He’s a big man. Huge. And he loves it.
I bought Turnberry for Trump. He said I want you to be my agent, I want to buy Turnberry but If I go in for it and they know it’s me then it’ll be too expensive, so you go buy it for me and bring me in when you need to.
I was working away at this for three or four months and I had to prove I had $80 million so I rang him up and said, Donald I’ve got a problem. What is it Chubby? I’ve got to prove I’ve got $80 million and I don’t have it right now. He said this is where I come in! And he took over.
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