Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy broke ground on the construction of a new facility that will house their virtual golf league called TGL.
The ceremony was held Tuesday at Palm Beach State College, with Woods and McIlroy both onsite for the photo op.
To date, TGL has announced the “signings” of Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, Adam Scott, Collin Morikawa, Matt Fitzpatrick, Max Homa, Billy Horschel, Justin Rose and Xander Schauffele.
“In terms of fan experience, it’s going to be nothing like golf has offered before,” said McIlroy, who finished T29 last week at Riviera.
As the PGA Tour has done for the past year or so, the “new concept” incorporates another LIV Golf feature: teams. This league, though, will be played on a digital course with six teams of three PGA Tour players competing in match play on a virtual course.
The league will compete on Monday nights ahead of the tour’s weekly event and will last approximately two hours. There will be 15 regular-season matches, followed by semifinals and a final.
“We’re going to have excitement, we’re going to have something different, something that is passionate,” said Woods, who then tried to claim it had nothing to do with LIV Golf.
“We’ve been involved in teams before whether it’s Ryder Cup, President’s Cup, Irish national teams, for me high school, college, whatever it is. You’re going to get home and away, you’re going to get some people that you want to win and not win. We’re going to have that type of excitement.”
McIlroy added: “It’s going to give the viewer at home and also the people in the arena just more of an in-depth of sort of how we do things and how we sort of think through things in our head. It’s just a more in-depth look into that.”
Similar to the PGA Tour, the Woods/McIlroy venture will reportedly rely on Palm Beach State students for its workforce, including unpaid internships in technology, hospitality and administrative services.
“Think about how cool this will be for this land, this campus, to become a launching pad for future leaders in sports and media and technology as they learn here as part of TGL,” said Mike McCarley, a partner of McIlroy and Woods. “We are breaking ground on much more than a dream, much more than a prime-time golf league.”
