When the first shot was hit live in the opening season of TGL into the 53-foot-high screen in the SoFi Center in South Florida, Andrew Macaulay and his technical team breathed a sigh of relief that, well, it worked. Everything was fine.
But then they stayed on their toes for hundreds more shots, more than 20 matches, and one championship finale.
And now they’re back to do it all over again — bigger and better.
TGL, the tech-infused, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy co-founded golf league, is set to start its second season on Dec. 28, with changes aplenty and an increased buzz around how this group is set to top its opening season.
“It’s cranked up to 11 all the time,” Macaulay, who is the chief technology officer of TMRW Sports, the umbrella company of which TGL is part of, told Sportsnet.ca. “It was last year, it is this year (but) it’s a different set of challenges this year.
“There is a pressure I would say. It’s just got to be better.”
While there have been no changes to the rosters of the six teams — although McIlroy said on The Fried Egg podcast in mid-December that his team, Boston Common, would be adding rising star Michael Thorbjornsen as a fill-in this season — there have been a lot of tweaks to the TGL playing field in both the virtual and the real worlds.
Starting in the real world, the GreenZone — the putting and short-game complex that exists inside the SoFi Center — has been completely remodelled and redone. The changes themselves are cosmetic, yes, but they’ve been done to help reshape how decisions are made around scoring.
The putting surface has now been expanded by 38 per cent, so it sits at about 5,270 square feet (which rivals an average PGA Tour green in scale). All of the seven hole-locations from the first season are gone; there are now 12 different hole locations to choose from. There was also a central knoll that has been lowered, while one bunker was removed and the two remaining ones are 50 per cent larger.
Some of the excitement for the new green, according to designer Beau Welling, is because of how much the “approach” slope has been softened, which allows for more go-for-it opportunities on the par 5s.
It was a faster process than redesigning a green in the real world, Welling told Sportsnet.ca because, of course, they don’t have to rely on grass to grow. Re-designing the building the GreenZone took about “half the time” that a real green project would take.
“When we first got involved talking about enhancements, we were just trying to utilize what existed. Just quasi ‘starting over’ was actually easier to build it up from all the base layers,” Welling said. “It was a team approach to figure out the enhancements.”
The hitting boxes that golfers use — to hit balls into the screen — were also enlarged, along with the sand trays (which can be lowered to include larger bunker lips). Additionally, six holes from TGL’s first season have been rebranded as ‘official’ holes for each team — one per squad. For example, Jupiter Links’ hole (Woods’ team) is called “The Jup Life” and is a 601-yard par 5 that “runs alongside the Jupiter inlet” towards the area’s iconic red lighthouse. World-renowned golf course designer, Gil Hanse, has been added to the roster of designers, who were already the who’s who of global golf-course architecture.
Full Swing also upgraded the game engine software with the goal of delivering more realistic — and immersive — virtual golf environments.
“The new stuff has really (come from) a soup of data and analytics of all the shots that were hit and how close they were to the pins and how many greens were hit. We got a bunch of data mixed in with player feedback both informally and formally after the season, plus TGL leadership, and what’s what resulted in some pretty big changes when you think about it,” Macaulay said.
Both the in-arena and at-home viewing experience is set to change for 2026 as well.
In the SoFi Center, patrons will be able to listen to the broadcast in a variety of capacities via in-ear listening devices offering four different feeds (including feeds dedicated to each of the competing teams).
The broadcast is also set to include an analyst for the first time, former PGA Tour player Robert Castro — who has become a bit of a TGL savant.
“He’s hit more shots than anyone (in the SoFi Center),” said Jeff Neubarth, the vice president, content media production, for TGL. “To have him be the ultimate TGL expert would be like having James Naismith as your basketball expert.”
The broadcast team is also set to add digital tracing of balls from the tee box to the screen, plus re-jig some of the other camera for just, overall, a better viewing product. According to Neubarth, there is one piece of broadcast tech that is still under wraps until the fourth week of the season, and he said if they don’t get a call from a network within 48 hours asking to use it on their golf broadcasts, he will be disappointed.
“We want to give the viewer more context for what the greatest players in TGL are doing and this will ease the burden of understanding,” said Neubarth.
Neubarth is one of the hardest working people each TGL night, given the rapid pace of the match. He is an award-winning producer of golf on television, but with 144 folks in the field of the PGA Championship, for example, he is able to have 20-or-so seconds to decide on what to show over 14 hours of broadcast in a day. TGL matches last just two hours and he’s constantly talking to his team — most days leaving the SoFi Center with no voice.
Neubarth has been trying to emphasize to his team that they get no credit for what they did last season and will begin in December at 0-0 on the scoreboard once again.
“We’re all feeling more anticipation than anything else. Last year I felt so many things were new that we had opportunities so show (a viewer) something new and they were going to be excited about it,” Neubarth said. “This year all I’m focused on is no sophomore slump. How do we get better? You have to find motivation in whatever you do.”
Whether it’s the broadcast product, the in-arena product, or even the field of play itself, whatever you thought of or remember of season one is about to be changed for the better for season two.
“As good as last year was,” Macaulay said, “this year has just got to be better.”
