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.<\/p>\n
But then they stayed on their toes for hundreds more shots, more than 20 matches, and one championship finale.<\/p>\n
And now they\u2019re back to do it all over again \u2014 bigger and better.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s cranked up to 11 all the time,\u201d Macaulay, who is the chief technology officer of TMRW Sports, the umbrella company of which TGL is part of, told Sportsnet.ca. \u201cIt was last year, it is this year (but) it\u2019s a different set of challenges this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a pressure I would say. It\u2019s just got to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n
While there have been no changes to the rosters of the six teams \u2014 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 \u2014 there have been a lot of tweaks to the TGL playing field in both the virtual and the real worlds.<\/p>\n
Starting in the real world, the GreenZone \u2014 the putting and short-game complex that exists inside the SoFi Center \u2014 has been completely remodelled and redone. The changes themselves are cosmetic, yes, but they\u2019ve been done to help reshape how decisions are made around scoring.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Some of the excitement for the new green, according to designer Beau Welling, is because of how much the \u201capproach\u201d slope has been softened, which allows for more go-for-it opportunities on the par 5s.<\/p>\n
It was a faster process than redesigning a green in the real world, Welling told Sportsnet.ca because, of course, they don\u2019t have to rely on grass to grow. Re-designing the building the GreenZone took about \u201chalf the time\u201d that a real green project would take.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we first got involved talking about enhancements, we were just trying to utilize what existed. Just quasi \u2018starting over\u2019 was actually easier to build it up from all the base layers,\u201d Welling said. \u201cIt was a team approach to figure out the enhancements.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hitting boxes that golfers use \u2014 to hit balls into the screen \u2014 were also enlarged, along with the sand trays (which can be lowered to include larger bunker lips). Additionally, six holes from TGL\u2019s first season have been rebranded as \u2018official\u2019 holes for each team \u2014 one per squad. For example, Jupiter Links\u2019 hole (Woods\u2019 team) is called \u201cThe Jup Life\u201d and is a 601-yard par 5 that \u201cruns alongside the Jupiter inlet\u201d towards the area\u2019s iconic red lighthouse. World-renowned golf course designer, Gil Hanse, has been added to the roster of designers, who were already the who\u2019s who of global golf-course architecture.<\/p>\n
Full Swing also upgraded the game engine software with the goal of delivering more realistic \u2014 and immersive \u2014 virtual golf environments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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\u2019s what resulted in some pretty big changes when you think about it,\u201d Macaulay said.<\/p>\n
Both the in-arena and at-home viewing experience is set to change for 2026 as well.<\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n
The broadcast is also set to include an analyst for the first time, former PGA Tour player Robert Castro \u2014 who has become a bit of a TGL savant.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s hit more shots than anyone (in the SoFi Center),\u201d said Jeff Neubarth, the vice president, content media production, for TGL. \u201cTo have him be the ultimate TGL expert would be like having James Naismith as your basketball expert.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t get a call from a network within 48 hours asking to use it on their golf broadcasts, he will be disappointed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to give the viewer more context for what the greatest players in TGL are doing and this will ease the burden of understanding,\u201d said Neubarth.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s constantly talking to his team \u2014 most days leaving the SoFi Center with no voice.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re 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,\u201d Neubarth said. \u201cThis year all I\u2019m focused on is no sophomore slump. How do we get better? You have to find motivation in whatever you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs good as last year was,\u201d Macaulay said, \u201cthis year has just got to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the first shot was hit live in the opening season of TGL into the 53-foot-high screen in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-363909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}