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TGL Week 1 Superlatives: A Bay Area blowout, a swoon-worthy Swede and DJ Khaled being DJ Khaled – Australian Golf Digest

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  • January 8, 2025
TGL Week 1 Superlatives: A Bay Area blowout, a swoon-worthy Swede and DJ Khaled being DJ Khaled – Australian Golf Digest

Welcome one, welcome all to Tomorrow Golf League TODAY. Each week from now until the end of TGL’s inaugural season, we will meet here to recap all the physical, virtual and physical-virtual action from the world’s most-hyped professional simulator golf league. But this isn’t any old play-by-play. No, no. That requires too much writing. Instead, we will break down the week’s winners and losers via the most scientific form of analysis known to humanity:

Superlatives.

Want to know who Boston Common’s class clown is? Which Atlanta Drive G.C. star is most likely to succeed? The best bromance on Jupiter Links G.C.? Then you’ve come to the right place. Consider this TGL’s veritable freshman yearbook—a humorous look at the happenings on Earth’s most stationary golf tour, acne and all. With a lot of luck and a little learning, hopefully we’ll all survive to see sophomore year.

Best performance: Ludvig Aberg

While Shane Lowry also put in a good shift for the boys from The Bay, TGL’s opening night was all about Ludvig Aberg. The 25-year-old Swede with the 18th-century composer name and dreamy Dracula looks (more on that later) showed the world why he’s a future World No. 1 whether playing on screen, grass or, in this case, both. Aberg, who barely uttered a syllable all night as he went about his business with the all the joy of a contract killer, set the tone by draining a birdie putt on the first hole to give The Bay Golf Club an early lead. His approach on the second found the hazard for TGL’s first penalty, but he bounced back by knocking his approach tight on the fourth and pouring in a 32-footer on the fifth to put another point on the board. This kid is winning a major in 2025. Book it.

Worst performance: New York Golf Club

As the already dated millennial saying goes, teamwork makes the dream work … unfortunately for NYGC that dream was a nightmare on Tuesday night as the trio of Xander Schauffele, Rickie Fowler and Matthew Fitzpatrick lost five of the first six holes, ultimately losing the match by a score of 9-2. Fitzpatrick, whose strength has generally been his putting, missed a couple of makeable putts early, Fowler looked increasingly rattled as his shots kept finding the long lettuce, and although Schauffele tried to keep things afloat, he looked off and inexperienced with screen golf. Unlike that other nouveau rich golf league, there’s no relegation in TGL, but if there were, NYGC would be the favorites to go down this morning.

Best performance (according to DJ Khaled): DJ Khaled

By our count, the camera cut to Khaled on five separate occasions on Tuesday night, including THREE times before Lowry’s opening tee shot was even in the air. The most cringe-worthy, however, came during a “course”-side interview with ESPN’s Marty Smith, when the music mogul was given free rein to talk about anything he wanted, which turned out to be all the great shots he hit while playing the TGL course earlier in the week. Khaled went on to wax about the importance of confidence when it comes to golf, so at least his message was consistent.

Most potential: The Hammer

The crowd at the SoFi Center had a fever and the only prescription was more HAMMER. A challenge flag of sorts, once thrown, the Hammer ups the ante, doubling the point total for a given hole. The catch is, if the Hammer is tossed before the first tee shot on a hole, it cannot be refused by the other team, making it both valuable a scoring tool and an interesting barometer of a given’s squad’s risk tolerance. When used—such as by Schauffele on the seventh hole, forcing Lowry to back off his tricky tee shot—it brought the crowd to life and provided some much-needed stakes. The problem was it wasn’t used enough. Better integration of the Hammer, or the addition of one or two other power-ups like it, could make a TGL a lot more fun to watch moving forward.

RELATED: Max Homa claps back at New York sports radio legend Mike Francesa for his TGL take

Most Puzzling Decision: New York Golf Club leaving the hometown kid at home

As we all know, Cam Young is from the mean streets of the Bronx Scarbourough. That makes him the closest thing to a New Yorker that New York Golf Club has, and yet curiously he was benched on Tuesday night for a Brit and two Cali kids. Needless to say, NYGC could have used some of that legendary Gotham grit as they hit the mat early and struggled to get back up.

Classiest clown: Shane Lowry

Honestly, the banter was a bit muddled across the board. It was tough to hear the players with multiple guys mumbling into their earpieces at once, “Empire State of Mind” blaring over the loudspeakers every five minutes and Matt Barrie babbling away as if he were paid by the word. But Lowry, who doesn’t have an inauthentic bone in his body, did his best to keep things chipper (and chippy) throughout. Thus, it was no surprise when he delivered the soundbite of the night long after most viewers had already tuned out:

“I told you I’m gonna be the Scottie Scheffler of indoor golf!” the Irishman bellowed on the par-4 13th moments before shanking a chip off the toe of his club.

What’s next? Prison?

Most references to a golfer being handsome during a golf broadcast … ever: Ludvig Aberg

That pretty much sums it up, but it wasn’t just the better halves who looked up from their phones every time the 6-foot-3 Swede stepped to the tee. Both host Scott Van Pelt and play-by-play announcer Matt Barrie could be heard gushing about Aberg’s aura on the broadcast at multiple points. This golf thing sure looks like it’s going to work out for Aberg, but if not, at least he has cologne commercials and Hanes billboards to fall back on.

Most haunting image: CGI SVP

If you’re one of those folks that complained “Nosferatu” wasn’t scary enough, then maybe you enjoyed ESPN’s Orlock-ian (or perhaps Paul Finebaum-ian) caricature of SVP that stalked TGL’s broadcast like that ancient, bloodthirsty specter (not Finebaum, to be clear). The Worldwide Leader has a long, checkered history with these sort of graphics—so much so that it’s fair to wonder if they’re doing it intentionally for “clicks”—but that didn’t make SVP’s pale, gaunt visage any less haunting.

Nailbiter of the night: Pitt vs. Duke

The opening match of TGL was, unfortunately, a runaway. In fact, it was so uncompetitive that most of the drama for golf fans came before 9 p.m., as Pitt-Duke threatened to run over on ESPN and spoil TGL’s debutant ball. For a few agonizing moments, we all white-knuckled our remotes, ready to jump over to ESPN Ocho at a moment’s notice, but the golf gods came through in the clutch, as the game went final right at the stroke of nine.

Most annoying old friend: Playing Through

If you were worried that TGL might not feel like the pro golf you know, love and love to hate, the first Playing Through break quickly eased those concerns. Like an old friend who knows how to push all your buttons, Playing Through showed up at the door announced on Tuesday night with a 30 rack under its arm even though you moved and didn’t give them your new address. We’re sure any comfort found in PT’s familiarity will be fleeting, but for one night at least, it was good to catch up.

RELATED: Tiger Woods has the greatest shot in TGL history—and he hasn’t even played yet

Thing that was good actually: Pace of play

Pace of play will be topic of discussion in golf until the heat death of the sun singes every last blade of grass on Earth’s surface. Not in TGL though. The most pleasant surprise of the league’s opening night was watching some of the sport’s top pros step up and hit it without obsessing on the jet stream, the buzz of an incoming text 300 yards away and the geo-political situation in Greenland. There was very little dead air throughout the broadcast, as the shots came fast and furious, the 40-second shot clock tick-tick-ticking away. The result was a zippy, non-stop pace of play that every pro golf league in existence should be envious of.

Thing that wasn’t so much: Watching a virtual ball on a screen within a screen

TGL can hype up the size of their simulator screen all they want, but the fact is, it’s still just a screen. And as it turns out, watching a digitally rendered golf ball soar through virtual air on a screen within your TV screen just isn’t that compelling. It lacked oomph and impact—that tactile feeling the best golf broadcasts can give us. The bland simulator visuals, especially the empty grandstands on “The Spear,” as our own Chris Powers pointed out, didn’t help either. Ultimately, TGL will live and die but how compelling golf fans find the golf, but the early returns suggest there’s more work to be done in that department.

RELATED: TGL 101: What you need to know about Tiger Woods’ high-tech golf league

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com

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