Tiger Woods’ new golf league introduced the creation of groups on Thursday.
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Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy knew that team golf can be the discuss of the golf world by Thursday. They simply didn’t know why.
The two golfers and principal companions in the brand new startup golf enterprise TMRW Sports had been planning this week for months. Their new golf league, the TGL — a high-tech, indoor league based and operated by TMRW Sports in partnership with the PGA Tour — was able to make its largest announcement but.
On Thursday morning, the news got here. The TGL introduced the creation of its first-ever golf team, Los Angeles Golf Club. LAGC can be one of six three-player groups concerned in the brand new league, which can be performed at a high-tech indoor stadium on Monday nights starting in January. Alexis Ohanian, the millionaire founder of Reddit, will be part of Serena and Venus Williams as franchise homeowners. A press launch saying the news revealed a glitzy new team brand and a 30-second promo video touting golf “for everybody.”
The news supplies some distinctions about how the TGL plans to go about its enterprise: constructing franchises round cities and attracting notable figures to tackle possession stakes. Though the competitions will happen solely in a brand new area in Palm Beach, Fla., the TGL appears to be putting a heavy emphasis on constructing identities with particular cities, separating it in a couple of key methods from the franchises of LIV Golf.
The drawback, nonetheless, was simply that. While Thursday’s announcement was meant to function a reminder of the multitude of variations between the brand new, PGA Tour-backed startup and its rivals at LIV Golf — it really served as the other.
Of course, no person on the TGL may’ve identified about what would occur on Tuesday morning. Every indication is that Woods and McIlroy didn’t know concerning the merger between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund till minutes earlier than it was introduced to the world on CNBC. But two days after that announcement rocked the golf world to its core, the TGL news comes as an odd aftershock.
For one factor, the PIF news brings into query the position served by the TGL in the golf ecosystem now that LIV is below the Tour banner. How can the TGL product declare to completely differentiate itself now that the is Tour dedicated to, in commissioner Jay Monahan’s phrases, “exploring team golf” as a viable possibility heading ahead? How can it obtain the total assist wanted from the Tour and its TV companions to generate and create a following? How can a Tour team product, LIV and the TGL all exist with out complicated golf viewers and exhausting gamers?
Yes, these had been questions confronted by TMRW lengthy earlier than the PIF settlement emerged, however they’re extra evident than ever now that golf faces a future in which lasting Tour/LIV peace appears at the least viable.
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The reply, as with most issues as of late, is that it’s too early to know. Maybe there’s area to place the TGL as a family-friendly, network-darling sibling to the extra critical competitions of LIV and the PGA Tour. Maybe there’s pleasure and even enthusiasm from the TMRW team on the prospects opened by an untapped pool of PIF funding. Or perhaps the news resonated as an added intestine punch on a troublesome day for a lot of in the professional golf ranks, the TGL’s two player-founders (McIlroy and Woods) amongst them. One indication, nonetheless small, got here simply minutes after TMRW introduced the LAGC transfer on Thursday afternoon: the Twitter account belonging to Tiger Woods retweeted the announcement.
Normally, this wouldn’t be news. A fast scan by means of Tiger’s Twitter reveals most of his social media habits is tied to his myriad enterprise pursuits. But this retweet additionally represented the primary motion from a Tiger-sanctioned account because the news that rocked the golf world on Tuesday morning.
Eventually, Woods will touch upon the PIF merger. But because the news of the TGL’s first franchise filtered by means of the golf world in the early portion of Thursday afternoon, the silence was equally as notable.
