TGL is cool and different, but that won’t last forever.
The game of golf is in a very fractured place right now as far as entertainment is concerned.
Let me be clear and say that I absolutely love golf. I love playing golf, I love watching golf and I love golf content in general.
But the game of golf has made being a fan of golf and watching golf a hard thing to do.
I say all of this to say that the introduction of TGL last week was a very exciting thing for somebody like me. TGL is effectively and essentially simulator golf with the biggest names in the game lining up to take part, mic’d up and entertaining away (even if they are golfers).
Tuesday night offered us the latest rendition of TGL and Los Angeles Golf Club (my chosen team, no big deal) absolutely destroyed Jupiter Links. Sentences like that one still feel silly to write, but the league is new so you have to roll with some of that.
As an avid golf fan I watched every bit of it and enjoyed it, but I would be lying if I said the sports fan in me was not also keeping tabs on Florida getting upset by Mizzou at the same time. SEC basketball is an important thing and expecting TGL to become appointment television right away is an ambitious endeavor, but part of the reason why I was watching the Gators and Tigers was that the TGL action was getting stale.
It is abundantly clear that an enormous amount of money, timing and effort has been put into TGL in the name of it being successful. I would not bet against it happening long-term. Clearly I am rooting for it.
But even only two weeks in we now firmly know, as if we didn’t before, that each two-hour outing can’t simply be pro golfers teasing one another. We know that we aren’t going to see amazing golf shots given that this is a simulator league… and that is okay! It’s cool! We also don’t need the conversations between the gamers to be enthralling. But something, anything, has to be the hook for this new league or it is going to be destined to the same fate that has fallen upon every rendition of The Match.
I’m not going to act like I know what the exact answer is, but I am going to tell you that I go out of my way to consume an enormous amount of golf content on television, on social media, on YouTube… so on and so forth. And even as someone like that, I still need something to hold my full attention against an SEC basketball game on a Tuesday night.
The initial shock, awe, fun and “this is cool”-ness of it all is fading just a bit.
We need more.
