First impressions of the custom-built SoFi Center that serves as the home of TGL, the new simulator-based team golf circuit that debuts in January, is that no expense appears to have been spared. It is singularly impressive, operationally functional and groundbreaking in the technical sense for which it was created.
In other words, it’s darn cool.
Mike McCarley, co-founder of TMRW Sports with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, on Wednesday invited about 50 members of the media for a sneak peek at the venue where TGL will stage all of its matches starting Jan. 7 with a prime-time premiere on ESPN. Reporters got a look at the almost-completed 1,500-seat stadium on the campus of Palm Beach State College, and PGA Tour players Wyndham Clark, Rickie Fowler and Billy Horschel, who represent three of the six four-man teams that will compete in the new league, gave a presentation. They marched through a tunnel onto the “field” after an introduction that included smoke, flashing lights and loud music, a glimpse of how they will enter when the cameras roll.
There won’t be a bad seat in the house with spectator seating horseshoed around the 250,000 square feet of playing area that features a “screen” zone and a “green” zone. The screen is monstrous, 64 feet high by 53 feet wide. It measures five stories high and fills nearly one end of the stadium. The inaugural virtual holes were created by Nicklaus Design, Beau Welling and Agustín Pizá. To ensure that the virtual results of shots accurately reflect the actual quality of the shot struck, TGL is employing 18 Full Swing radar devices combined with eight Top Tracer optical cameras.
The green zone, meanwhile, for shots 50 yards and in, as well as putts, and putts, sits on a turntable 41 yards in diameter and features seven cup placements and an almost infinite number of contouring options with 567 hydraulic jacks underneath it.
It’s a vastly new take on “stadium golf, not simulated golf,” McCarley said. “There’s so much technology, bigger and better than I could have ever imagined,” he added.
And because it will be played in an enclosed playing area, there is opportunity to provide an unprecedented approach to coverage. There will be a rail cam, which is used for Olympic track and field, there are cameras at the base of the bunkers at the green complex and at ground level in front of the two full-swing hitting areas that are 35 and 21 yards from the screen. The latter will be used for shots measuring 130-50 yards out. Overhead is a camera stationed above the green, providing the same perspective as a “blimp” shot, while a spider cam that is used at football games also will be used.
“Bringing golf into a stadium is so unique, and I think you’re going to see a lot of interesting things from us,” said Clark, a member of the Bay Golf Club that faces Fowler and the New York Golf Club at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday, Jan. 7, in a 15-hole match intended to be completed in two hours.
In partnership with the PGA Tour, TGL was scheduled to debut last January, but had to be delayed a year when an electrical outage led to damage to the air-supported domed structure. With a little more than three weeks to go before the first match, there were still plenty of last-minute items that needed to be completed.
As previously reported in Golf Digest, players will hit shots from real grass, and Clark, Fowler and Horschel demonstrated full shots from fairway length, rough and sand. An interactive “digital caddie” system assists with yardages, which are stationed in front of the team bench areas to the right of the giant screen.
Many of the 24 players who are competing have tested out the simulators and the turf and green complex. In the last 30 days there have been 25 tests and rehearsals held to ensure that the technology is sound and that players get used to the 40-second time limit for each shot. Another 25 rehearsals are scheduled in the next 20 days.
“When we started on this journey,” McCarley said, “you take a sport like golf that’s got 600 years of history and tradition and everything that comes with that, the good and the bad. And we really wanted to keep one foot firmly planted in the traditional game. And there’s elements of that. But with the other foot, we really wanted to be … more into the future and embracing the future technology.
“From very early conversations with Tiger and Rory, both of them shared that thesis in a way that they saw what was happening just in their daily lives and how can we bring that into golf and help bring the game, not necessarily to a more modern presentation, but just put it together in a way and showcase it in a way that there will be people who don’t necessarily follow the traditional game, but will get into it because of the way we present this. And then because of that, they may become fans of the traditional game in a certain way.
“New, fun, fast technology, team sports, it all kind of goes together.”
“This is something new and innovative that is going to really help grow the game of golf,” Clark said. “It will give people a new perspective of us in a different arena where it’s more intimate and you kind of get to see our personalities.”
by Dave Shedlosky
Credits: Golf Digest