The TGL fan experience wasn’t for me. But it might be for you

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — You want to see Tiger Woods in action for the first time this year? Tune into ESPN Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern for the fourth week of the second season for TGL golf, the made-for-TV, indoor nighttime golf league.

Woods is not playing but his club, Jupiter Links, is in action, facing the New York Golf Club. (Woods is an owner-operator of the Jupiter team.) You’ll have a chance to see Woods walk back and forth from the rotating green at one end of the playing field to the teeing ground at midfield at the SoFi Center, off PGA Boulevard, the Main Street of the modern PGA Tour. 

Or maybe you’re nearby. (Six million people live in South Florida, plus visitors.) You want to see all this action live? As of Tuesday morning, good tickets were still available for tonight’s contest, starting at $250, via Ticketmaster.

Last Tuesday, I went to watch TGL in its first week of this new year. Seeking the fan experience, I bought the least expensive single ticket available, $189, including (per the fine print) various fees. But not all various fees. I inadvertently first went to valet, where the parking fee was $80, and from there to the self-parking lot, where the fee was $30. The SoFi Center is on the Palm Beach State College campus.

I asked the parking attendant if there was anyplace else I could park for free and walk in from there. There was not. “If it makes you feel any better, last year the parking here was $40.” Are falling parking-lot fees some kind of economic indicator? Judging by the nearby cars even in the self-parking, and the spiffy appearance of the people coming out of them, nobody was too worried about $10 here, $10 there. When I got into a little conversation with the twentysomething ticket-holder emerging from a car parked next to mine, he rattled off various details about the golf courses at Apogee, a new development about 20 miles north of here where there are three courses and a short course. “It’s killer,” my neighbor-in-parking told me. 

The SoFi Center was spotless, slightly humid, kinda dead, with limited food opps — a soft pretzel for $8, hamburgers and veggie burgers for $14 — and all manner of top-shelf liquors. The arena can hold about 1,500 people and there were hundreds of empty seats. The two teams competing in this season opener were the Atlanta squad playing the Bay team, representing greater San Francisco. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say I have watched some TGL on TV, but never really understood what I was watching. I don’t hit balls on a simulator. I have never been to a Topgolf. I am not the demographic TGL is going for here. I did go to ABA basketball games as a kid and very much enjoyed them. The red, white and blue ball, Dr. J flying through the air with it. 

Back then, we didn’t have earbuds. At the SoFi Center, you’re given a pair, seemingly a gift of your patronage, although you have to offer some information to get them up and running. I spent about 20 minutes charging mine and linking them to my cellphone. At the 21-minute mark, I gave up. I could hear play-by-play commentary and player-to-player chitchat by way of dedicated channels available on my phone. Amid all the other ambient sounds, I didn’t get far with it.

I spent a lot of time watching Billy Horschel, a lifelong Floridian and a former Gator golfer who is on the Atlanta team. He always seemed to be doing something and doing it energetically. I saw him hit an iron into the giant screen toward an electronic hole I could not process, but the swing looked good. Horschel must have felt the same. The moment his shot was airborne and bound for the screen, he somehow knew he had stiffed it. Must be nice. There are no wind gusts to worry about at the SoFi Center. He was inside 10 feet. Before long, it was time to reverse directions and march off to the rotating green. It’s dizzying.

Above, from the SoFi Center’s roof, there are lots of flashing lights. Booming music (good sound system!) is a constant, except when the public address announcer was offering some kind of insight into the action below, including the ever-present question about whether one team or the others would be “throwing the hammer.” For the thousand or more fans on hand, plus the hundreds of thousands watching on ESPN and its family of broadcasters, it, evidently, was some sort of mild preoccupation.

You can read all about hammer throwing, TGL-style, on the TGL website, and I did. Looking at your phone while attending this two-hour, 15-hole TGL event is very much the norm. Throwing the Hammer is a strategic tool by which a team can increase the value of any single hole from one point to two. There’s more to it than that but that at least gets you started.

The hammer itself is not a hammer at all. Horschel had his in his back left pocket, where it looked almost like a Handi Wipe, sometimes carried by Sunday duffers, to keep their clubs and golf balls clean. But you can throw the hammer with a lot of style. The players, by the way, where team uniforms adorned with their usual, individually secured endorsements. Patrick Cantlay, also on the Atlanta team, had Delta stenciled on the chest of his shirt, Cisco on his sleeve and Apollo on his hat. 

Lexi Thompson was in the house as was the LPGA commissioner, Craig Kessler. A women’s TGL league is coming later this year. Brian Rolapp, the PGA Tour’s CEO, was in the house. Rolapp and his fellow Tour execs have a vested interest in TGL’s success, because partial ownership of a TGL team could prove to be another recruiting tool in keeping star golfers on the PGA Tour and off LIV. Woods is an owner of the league and an owner of the Jupiter team. Rory McIlroy is an owner of the league, too, and on the Boston team, which is owned by the Fenway Sports Group, where he has business ties.

At the end of nine holes, the score was Atlanta 4, Bay 3. I can’t say I cared but I was mildly curious to see how the last five holes would play out. I went out to the wide, uncrowded corridor, got in a short line to play a single shot on a simulator sponsored by the PGA of America, hit a weak push with a 7-iron into a virtual ocean for my first swing of the new year and returned to the arena.

Somewhere in this period, “Good Vibrations,” the old Marky Mark hit, thundered through the SoFi Center. Chris Gotterup, a fill-in player for Atlanta, holed a bunker shot. I think somebody had thrown a hammer before he played the shot but cannot say for sure. The final score was Atlanta Drive Golf Club 7, Bay Golf Club 4. I cannot think of a sports league where the founding principle was to make money for team and league owners, but maybe TGL will be the exception.

Don’t go by me. When Topgolf was first explained to me, before the first one went up, I thought, “Sounds like a glorified driving range.” I thought the same thing about driverless cars. On my way back to self-parking, I saw, for the first time in my life, a driverless car in action. Its owner, evidently, had figured out a way to get all the benefits of valet parking without having to pay the extra $40.

Back in the day, ABA basketball was kiddie entertainment for young basketball fans. Serious basketball was played at The Garden, by the Knicks. Knicks v. Celtics. Knicks v. the Sixers. Knicks v. The Lakers. Maybe Jupiter v. New York will someday have that kind of ring. Maybe someday there will be a movie about TGL golf as there is about rollerball. Maybe this whole thing will play out in some glorious way I can’t see. People need entertainment, and here’s TGL, providing it. Entertainment is like everything else. It’s in the eye of the beholder. I’d rather watch a playoff from a Monday four-spotter to get a spot in a Tour event. But that’s just me.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com