Golf, to its credit, has tried numerous concepts but they have been swatted away by the general public as cynical and contrived cash-grabs. Will the TGL be any different?
Tomorrow’s Golf League kicks off on Tuesday night, an indoor simulator competition founded by Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods which is supposedly ‘golf reimagined’ to take the sport into the 21st Century.
The 21st Century golf viewer, or certainly the target audience for the TGL is someone who doesn’t have the time to sit down for four consecutive rounds and even struggles to work through a Sunday broadcast of a regular event without getting distracted for long periods by other things.
And if you’re watching on US television. Enjoy your ads.
So, how will the TGL strike a balance between being a genuinely new and exciting product good enough to win over the golf die hards, capture a new audience and, which is crucial nowadays, win plaudits on social media?
The onus really is on the players.
In sport, fans always yearn for yesteryear and the characters that went before. When it comes to golf and the current split between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the game has been stripped of its characters.
Now is the opportunity for the players in the TGL to express themselves and it rally is up to them to decide how loose they are going to be on screen.
If it’s just a case of watching them batter golf balls into a simulator for two hours I won’t be watching. I mean, I don’t even enjoy doing that myself.
Maybe I am in the traditional golfing market.
The players need to strike a balance between being competitors but also entertainers. I think there is more than enough room for the TGL concept if it takes on the mantle of being an entertainment venture.
We have enough competitive golf as it is and unfortunately at the moment, it’s pretty boring.
The Match was an attempt to try and liven up the players in a competitive environment but it wasn’t until recent editions that we saw this begin to come to fruition but even still, the exhibitions are lacking something and they do appear contrived, even if the trash talk beforehand is worth a giggle.
PGA Tour fields are not moving the needle. Rory McIlroy made a great point last year that the two best events in golf are the Olympics and Ryder Cup because players are not competing for prize money.
The Presidents Cup must be included too, these events allow for passion to emerge from the players.
I’m not asking for players to start chest pounding or sing their respective national anthems but in a sport which is totally reliant on the best players being in the same place four times a year, it’s time for some of the lesser players to step up and show some personality.
The opening night gets underway on Tuesday featuring Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick and Rickie Fowler vs Shane Lowry, Ludvig Åberg and Wyndham Clark.
Outside of Lowry if you saw any of them sitting at the bar when you walked into your local would you talk to them?
It’s certainly not the most enthralling half dozen to open up a new venture which needs to be fun and exciting, but there is an opportunity for these players to let us into their character because the novelty of this concept will soon wear off.
We need to see a side of the players we have never seen before. The TGL should not need the top players to make this a success, we have the opportunity for others to become cult heroes here.
After all, the TGL is a team based competition. Surely you are trying to entice a new audience to get invested in a particular team and support them?
Tiger Woods admitted that the year long delay to launch the TGL after the Palm Beach venue saw its roof collapse after a storm was a blessing in disguise as it gave more time to further develop the product.
There is a sense that this concept has not been rushed as it might have appeared twelve months ago, so, here’s hoping the technology doesn’t glitch or else this could be doomed to fail after night one.
The DP World Tour have led the way in terms of content, especially with the walk and talk interviews with players.
The PGA Tour? Not so much. The mic’d up interviews with players on the course haven’t really worked.
At the TGL the players are going to be mic’d up, is that going to be actually useful? We want to see the players taking swipes at each other during the match, while there is still an obviously high level of competition, that could be fun.
Everyone is entertained at their golf course by the guy who can walk out with no practice and casually shoot 67 while trashing talking the crap out of everyone. Or the guy who shanks or tops it off the first tee while hungover but ends up having a once in a lifetime round.
The TGL could work but it needs to be entertaining.
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