Tomorrow’s Golf League, or TGL, is a brand-new golf league that combines indoor simulated golf with traditional golf elements. Founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, TLG debuted in January and is bringing new life to the game of golf in the year 2025.
TGL is made up of six teams, all filled with the game’s top players. Marquee names like Colin Morikawa, Justin Thomas, and Rickie Fowler are just some of the world’s best players to participate in this new league.
To a person who has no idea about the game of golf, these names mean nothing. But to regular watchers of the game, they know these players from their regular high finishes in major tournaments.
What is unique about TGL is all the new components it offers to the game. The players start off by hitting their tee shots into a simulator screen that tracks the ball. Depending on where their tee shot lands, the players then hit from real patches of fairway, rough, or sand.
Once the players hit the green, they move to the GreenZone, a real-life green that rotates and changes in between holes to make each hole unique. This brings TGL that traditional golf element that brings familiarity to regular golf watchers.
One of golf’s biggest criticisms is its pace of play, with 18 holes usually taking four hours to complete.
TGL combatted this by incorporating a 40-second shot clock that forces players to hit their shot within that time frame. Each team is also granted four timeouts per match, which they can use if they need more time to calculate their next shot.
The most fun rule change comes from the incorporation of the Hammer. In TGL, each hole is worth one point, with the team who has the most points at the end being crowned victorious. But, if a team throws the Hammer and the other team accepts it, the hole then becomes worth two points.
If the Hammer is thrown before the teams tee off, the opposing team must accept the Hammer. This is another way Woods and Mcllory try to bring life to the game of golf.
With all of the revolutionary changes TGL has already made in golf, the program has yet to add one more: a women’s team. Michelle Wie West, a women’s US Open champion and co-owner of Los Angeles Golf Club hopes to one day compete in the TGL.
“Truthfully, I wish the women had been involved from the get-go,” Wie West said in an interview with CNN. “But it’s great to hear they’re in the conversation. This would be really great for mixed team events. I think the fans are yearning for it.”
Los Angeles Golf Club owner Alexis Ohanian also has been very vocal about incorporating a women’s team into TGL.
“I’m not making any news here, but I’ll just say that when I invested, it was on the condition that I get a women’s team as well,” Ohanian said in a CNN interview.
As far as the numbers go, the debut season of TGL can definitely be considered a success.
TGL captured a new demographic for the game of golf, with 42 percent of the viewing audience was in the 18- to 49-year-old range, the second youngest television audience in sports, only behind the NBA.
Each match of the debut season of TGL averaged 513,000 viewers, according to Front Office Sports. This was a 21 percent increase over the programming it replaced, which was mostly that of college basketball.
It is no surprise the most watched TGL match of the season was Woods’ debut during week 2, which brought in 1.05 million viewers.
The championship match series was between Atlanta Drive and New York Golf Club, with Atlanta coming out victorious, 4-3. To capture the championship trophy, Billy Horschel made an improbable downhill birdie putt that went from left to right to take the lead and, ultimately, the win. It doesn’t get any more electric than that.
TGL proved that there is more to golf than just the traditional game that everybody finds boring. With the success of its debut season, look for TGL to come back and better than ever for its second season.