The indoor golf league that Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy envisioned has finally debuted

The indoor golf league that Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy envisioned has finally debuted

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Ludvig Aberg will be the answer to a trivia question: He made the first birdie in TGL history.

And with that, the indoor golf competition that Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy had been envisioning for years was finally underway.

TGL had its debut match on Tuesday night, with New York Golf Club’s Rickie Fowler, Matt Fitzpatrick and Xander Schauffele taking on Bay Golf Club’s Shane Lowry, Wyndham Clark and Aberg in the opening match.

Lowry struck out first at 9:15 p.m. Four minutes later, the first hole in TGL history was completed when Aberg scored the first point in league history with a 9-foot throw. Yes, it happens so quickly.

“It was just a conjured dream,” Woods said on the ESPN broadcast. “Rory and I talked about it; It’s hard to believe that this dream has become a reality and that we have truly taken golf into another stratosphere.”

Woods and McIlroy — part of the brain trust that launched this venture — were there, as expected. DJ Khaled was also there, running around while the players warmed up and showing off his swing with an imaginary racket.

The venue is a 250,000 square foot facility at Palm Beach State College. Players hit some shots on a video screen, some on real grass, some off turf, and the bunkers aren’t just made of real sand — it’s sand from Augusta National Golf Club, the same sand Woods has at his home practice range. It’s super high-tech, collecting data with every shot. Players wore microphones, there was betting and fans surrounded the “court” in an intimate arena where music blared and noise was welcome.

Once teams got within 50 yards of the marker, they moved onto a short-game complex — with a green set on a 41-yard-wide turntable with about 600 contour-changing devices attached to the underside.

Woods loved it when some fans were, shall we say, less than calm when Clark made a putt on one of the first holes.

“You don’t normally hear that at events,” Woods said. “That’s what you’ll hear here.”

Woods is expected to make his debut for his Jupiter Links club on January 14th. McIlroy’s debut could be Jan. 27 when Boston Common plays Jupiter Links. The regular season runs until March 4th. There are 24 players – six teams of four – and the top four teams advance to the playoffs with a best-of-three championship series two weeks before the Masters.

Each team activates three players for a game and the 15-hole competitions are completed in approximately two hours. Everything is shown on ESPN platforms, often in prime time. The league has been in the works for several years; The original plan called for it to begin last year, but a storm slowed construction and organizers pushed back the debut to 2025.

“It’s not traditional golf, yeah,” Woods said. “But it’s golf. And that’s the main thing.”

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AP Golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

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