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Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy He knew That golf team will be the talk of the golf world on Thursdays. They just didn’t know why.
The two golfers and major partners in new golf venture TMRW Sports have been planning this week for months. Golf’s new league, TGL — a high-tech indoor league founded by TMRW Sports and run in partnership with the PGA Tour — was ready to make its biggest announcement yet.
Thursday morning, the news came. TGL announced the creation of its first ever golf team, Los Angeles Golf Club. LAGC will be one of six three-man teams participating in the new league, which will be played in a high-tech indoor stadium on Monday nights starting in January. Reddit millionaire founder Alexis Ohanian will join Serena and Venus Williams as franchise owners. A press release announcing the news revealed a catchy new team logo and a 30-second promotional video promoting golf “for everyone.”
The news offers some distinctions about how TGL plans to do business: building franchises around cities and attracting high-profile people to take ownership stakes. Although the competitions will be held exclusively at a new arena in Palm Beach, Florida, TGL appears to be firmly focused on building identities with specific cities, separating them in a few key ways from the LIV Golf franchises.
The problem, however, was just that. While Thursday’s announcement was supposed to be a reminder of the many differences between the new PGA Tour-backed startup and its LIV Golf rivals — it was actually quite the opposite.
Of course, no one at TGL could have known what would happen on Tuesday morning. Every indication is that Woods and McIlroy knew nothing about the merger between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund until minutes before it was announced to the world on CNBC. But two days after that announcement shook the golf world to the core, the TGL news came as a strange aftershock.
For one thing, the PIF news raises questions about the role TGL plays in the golf ecosystem now that LIV is under the Tour banner. How can a TGL product claim to fully differentiate itself now that the tour has committed to, in Commissioner Guy Monahan’s words, “exploring team golf” as a viable option moving forward? How can she get the full support needed from the tour and her television partners to build and build a following? How can a Tour, LIV, and TGL team product exist without confusing golf spectators and tiring players?
Yes, these were questions TMRW grappled with long before the PIF agreement came along, but they are more evident than ever now that Golf faces a future in which a permanent peace on the Tour/LIV seems at least viable.
The answer, as with most things these days, is that it’s too early to tell. Perhaps there’s room to position the TGL as the network’s beloved, family-friendly brother to the more serious competitions of the LIV and PGA Tour. There may be excitement or even enthusiasm on the part of the TMRW team for the potential offered by an untapped pool of PIF funding. Or perhaps the news resonated as an additional jab at a difficult day for many in the professional golf ranks, TGL founders among them (McIlroy and Woods). One indication, though small, came just minutes after TMRW announced LAGC’s move Thursday afternoon: Tiger Woods’ Twitter account retweeted the announcement.
Normally, this wouldn’t be news. A quick scan through Tiger’s Twitter reveals that most of his behavior on social media is related to his myriad business interests. But this retweet also marks the first move from the tiger-punishing account since the news rocked the golf world on Tuesday morning.
In the end, Woods will comment on the PIF merger. But as news of TGL’s first franchise spread across the golf world in the early part of Thursday afternoon, the silence was equally noticeable.