Indoor golf league created by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy has a loud, swift debut match

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Ludvig Aberg will be the answer to a trivia question: He made the first birdie in TGL history.

And with that, the indoor golf competition that Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy had envisioned for years was finally underway.

TGL had its debut match Tuesday night, with Rickie Fowler, Matt Fitzpatrick and Xander Schauffele of New York Golf Club taking on Shane Lowry, Wyndham Clark and Aberg of The Bay Golf Club in the opener. The 15-hole match took just under two hours, which is exactly how TGL envisioned this to work. Final score: The Bay 9, New York 2.

“The last time I’ve had that much fun was probably last September,” Lowry said, turning toward Clark as he said that — the obvious reference being how he and Aberg were part of the European Ryder Cup team that beat Clark and the United States in the fall of 2023.

Yes, trash talk is part of TGL as well — even among teammates.

“Look, I had an amazing two hours,” Lowry said.

Lowry struck the first shot at 9:15 p.m. Four minutes later, the first hole in TGL history was complete when Aberg rolled in a 9-footer for the first point in league play. Yes, it moves that quickly.

“This was just a dream conjured up,” Woods said on the ESPN broadcast. “Rory and I were talking about it; it’s hard to believe that dream came into reality and we were able to take golf into another stratosphere, really.”

Woods and McIlroy — part of the brain trust that put together this venture — were there, as expected. DJ Khaled was there too, milling about while players were warming up, showing off his swing with an imaginary club.

The venue is a 250,000-square-foot facility at Palm Beach State College. Players hit some shots into a video screen, some off real grass, some off turf, and the bunkers are not just real sand — it’s sand from Augusta National Golf Club, the same sand Woods has at his home practice facility. It’s super-high-tech, with data collected off every shot.

“Nobody had more fun than us,” Clark said.

Players wore microphones, there were betting options and fans surrounded the “course” in an intimate arena where music blared and noise was welcomed.

“A glorified man cave in a way,” Fowler said.

Once teams moved within 50 yards of the pin, they headed to a short-game complex — with a green that sits on a 41-yard-wide turntable and has about 600 devices underneath to change the contours. Players said it was difficult to make putts, which might be understandable.

Fans cheered. And they booed — a little, anyway. Schauffele heard those after he botched a chip, part of a night where not much went right for his team.

“I probably would have booed me too,” Schauffele said.

The players seemed to love it. Lowry had one-liner after one-liner. A couple of examples:

— “I’m going to be the Scottie Scheffler of indoor golf.”

— “A bit like myself. A bit chunky,” he said after one shot came up a touch short.

It ended with a 729-yard par-5 — a reachable 729-yard par-5, if that makes any sense. Handshakes and cheers all around when it was over, Lowry gave a big wave to the fans and the night was done.

“So much fun,” Aberg said.

Woods loved it when some fans were, let’s say, not exactly quiet as Clark lined up a putt on one of the early holes.

“You don’t normally hear that at events,” Woods said. “You’re going to hear that here.”

Woods is expected to debut for his Jupiter Links club on Jan. 14. McIlroy’s debut could be Jan. 27 when Boston Common plays Jupiter Links. The regular season goes until March 4. There are 24 players — six teams of four — and the top four teams advance to the playoffs with a best-of-three championship series two weeks before the Masters.

Each team activates three players for a match, and the 15-hole competitions will be done in about two hours. It’ll all be shown on ESPN platforms, often in prime time. The league has been in the works for a few years; the original plan was for it to start last year, but a storm slowed construction and organizers pushed the debut back to 2025.

“It’s not traditional golf, yes,” Woods said. “But it is golf. And that’s the main thing.”

And, as Fowler pointed out, the crowd in the arena is one thing, but how television viewers accept it will be the big test.

“If it does well there, the sky’s the limit with what you can do,” Fowler said. “You can put up arenas in different places. This is just the start.”

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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf