1/15/25

TGL Roundtable: Critiques and Reactions to Week 2

The simulator golf league took a step back despite Tiger's debut

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TGL is unlike anything we’ve seen before in professional golf, and it’s been the talk of the sport for the last two weeks. On Tuesday night, Tiger Woods made his debut in the simulator league he co-founded with Rory McIlroy, and the Fried Egg Golf staff had a few thoughts to share.

We highlighted five key areas that could make or break this new league and staff members were assigned different elements of the competition to focus on. Here are our reactions, critiques, and general notes from TGL’s second night of play.

Week 2 Reaction: What Got Better/Worse

What TGL needs is a competitive match. Back-to-back blowouts have made the Singles matches, the back half of the broadcast, a pointless exercise. Combine another non-competitive night with the newness of the first week wearing off, and Week 2 was a downgrade all around outside of Kevin Kisner’s shank. It was the highlight of the night and the whole TGL experiment thus far. Next week’s match between New York Golf Club and Atlanta Drive GC desperately needs its outcome to still be up in the air 40 minutes into the two-hour (plus!) broadcast window. – Meg Adkins

Two weeks into TGL, it’s probably too early to say they should change X or alter Y. Overall, Week 2 felt an awful lot like Week 1. There were certainly minor tweaks made to the broadcast but the in-arena experience and play were eerily similar. We had semi-awkward walk-ins (although Tiger’s was pretty fun), a period of blistering pace during Triples (three-man alternate shot), some oddities with the simulator seemingly miscalculating shots, uncomfortable interviews, and then another period of familiar Singles matches as one team (Los Angeles Golf Club) beat down the other (Jupiter Links). With four hours of evidence, there are certainly format changes that could be made to liven up the product and make the entire event compelling. Even when there is a blowout. I’ll let the rest of the team flesh those out in a second. – Will Knights

The Broadcast

This will surprise exactly none of you, but Max Homa, Kevin Kisner, and Sahith Theegala have the juice. Whenever they were hitting shots, bantering with teammates, or answering Matt Barrie’s (somewhat anodyne) questions last night, the product felt alive. If anything, Barrie should have thrown to them more often. My concern is this: if I were to list the five TGL players that I’d expect to be good on the telecast, Homa, Kisner, and Theegala would be three of them. Homa and Kisner’s teammate Tom Kim, benched yesterday, would be another. Perhaps these engaging personalities should have been spread a bit more evenly across the league? – Garrett Morrison

Serena Williams is many things. The most dominant tennis player I’ve ever seen. A smart and charismatic presence on TV. A co-owner of TGL’s Los Angeles Golf Club. She is not, however, someone who knows anything about golf. She good-naturedly admitted as much seconds into her stint alongside Matt Barrie in the booth last night. Still, ESPN kept her there for 15 long minutes, during which she offered insights such as, “They definitely… gotta… start swinging… a little bit better.” (She was talking about Jupiter Links Golf Club, down 0-5 at the time.) I don’t blame her! If I were forced to commentate on, say, a cricket match, I wouldn’t do much better. ESPN needs to bring golf geeks into the booth. – Garrett Morrison

I’m sure it’s not easy to produce a live broadcast from the sensory blitzkrieg chamber known as the SoFi Center, but it feels like last week’s product was a lot better. Between Matt Barrie asking questions that went awkwardly unanswered, a half-dozen cuts to a befuddled Serena Williams in the crowd, and virtual silence from Collin Morikawa, the best (actual) player involved last night, Week 2 fell flat to me without the appeal of it being “new.” If these matches aren’t going to be competitive – and one team in this league has two virtually retired players on it! – then they need to be entertaining in order to make people come back each week. At least we got the clip of Kevin Kisner asking Charlie Woods to play for him. – PJ Clark

It would be nice if the Hot Mic segment was utilized to highlight some of the strategic interactions before a shot. We came back from a break to Marty Smith telling us how the LAGC team had been huddled around the screen debating how to play one of the singles holes. It would have been nice to hear the discussion instead of hearing about the discussion. – Cameron Hurdus

Kevin Kisner should retire from TGL immediately, but he should and could replace Matt Barrie (and Marty Smith) in the booth. – Cameron Hurdus

Matt Barrie asking Max Homa if Kevin Kisner potentially making a chip during a screen golf match seconds after he skulled a bunker shot off the flagstick at 200 mph would be “one of the greatest moments in golf history” stopped me in my tracks. Golf history?! Sarcastic or not – and I’m not sure it was – maybe we all just need to relax a little bit (a lot a bit) with this. – PJ Clark

Player Interactions

Entering this week, I was most interested in how Tiger would be treated by the other competitors. Would they be walking on eggshells around the boss? Coming out of tonight’s match, I am not sure we have an answer. Kevin Kisner’s poor performance (and appreciated self-deprecation) was the lightning rod of the entire event, with both teams clowning NBC’s lead analyst. As expected, Max Homa starred on the microphone, bringing some much-needed levity to the Jupiter Links faithful amidst the team’s blowout loss. – PJ Clark

I think an issue TGL will need to sort out and confront at some point is whether this is a real competition or just some famous, talented guys having a laugh using some really cool technology. That’s not to suggest the latter is all bad or an absolute failure. But stuck between them seems like doom. I’m not sure the ESPN broadcast helps frame it as a real competitive endeavor yet. One player certainly did on Tuesday night and that was Sahith Theegala. His interactions with the broadcast and his teammates affirmed his overall lovability. He fully admitted to being completely “amped” up and feeling the juice of being in a real arena, on stage, and competing. Balls were going a full club farther with the adrenaline. At one point, he jumped around like a giddy kid who just holed out when he touched 184 ball speed, which he’d never hit in a tournament. This was cool. This was endearing. Perhaps most importantly, the adrenaline of the Sahith Show was a sign that at least one guy (not saying the others weren’t) was feeling juiced up by something competitive. – Brendan Porath

The imprimatur of Tiger and all his involvement brings is perhaps the biggest “off-the-bus” advantage TGL had before any real proof of concept. That said, it sort of failed to capitalize on the first Tiger-on-stage impression it could make. He’ll play again, of course, and they will continue to improve. But there were not many notable moments with Tiger, who seemed at times uncomfortable and did not play very well in a blowout. His walk-out was fine and even great, emblematic of Tiger and who he has always been — a little uncomfortable and even awkward in some moments. His son, Charlie, cracking on him about the dorkiness of it was a genuine and great moment, a real banter highlight that TGL can produce. – Brendan Porath

Golf Holes and Course Strategy

Look, I understand this isn’t real golf. So you can roll your eyes at me. But it’s befuddling that the golf ball lands and sticks immediately on every shot in TGL. It’s a simulator league! You don’t need firm conditions for the course to play bouncy. Why is it a dartboard? Why is the test completely aerial and the ground is no factor at all?  Perhaps this was a request from Nicklaus Design. – Joseph LaMagna

Pick Yer Plunder for the second week in a row brings the heat while the other 13 holes are moot (Straight Up, a cape template, performed well but the match was over at this point.) So let me set this straight, the most boisterous and insanely unrealistic hole is by far the most interesting and enjoyable to watch. To make this TV product more compelling, I’d love to see more holes like Pick Yer Plunder that allow for high volatility so we don’t continue to have these lopsided matches that completely lose steam after five holes. – Matt Rouches

The par 3s flat-out stink. Having a stock green for every hole accentuates how bland the par 3s are to watch. We want holes with grandstands surrounding the green! – Matt Rouches

Building off what Matt said, the golf holes are just wildly uninspiring. You could’ve done anything! Trampolines, aerial hazards, windmills. There were no constraints. Ok, except for the Greenzone, the short game area, that barely changes for each hole. The Greenzone is a massive constraint, which means the golf holes need to be extremely creative from tee to green for the gameplay to be interesting. And they are definitively not. – Joseph LaMagna

Match Format

It might be time to introduce some Mario Kart blue shells to give some of these teams a chance. – Cameron Hurdus

It’s too early to make any definitive statements, but like I said last week, 15 holes might be too many holes. Six Triples, six Singles. Unfortunately, since points scored is a tiebreaker we won’t see this change this year. – Adam Woodard

I would love to see the matches be more driven by players’ reactions to holes that they have never seen before. This wrinkle would make the shot clock so much more interesting and relevant and might give us a chance to hear about the strategy behind why a player/team chooses to play a certain shot. In the current format, each match boils down to a pure execution test where little thought goes into the shot being played. This format combined with a set of relatively bland holes and marshmallow-like conditions is nothing more than a half-step up from Topgolf. – Beau Scroggins