PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — You can only imagine how the TGL technicians felt when Rory McIlroy walked into his 90-minute practice session last week with two launch monitors from his personal collection. The four-time major champion and TGL co-founder needed to put his concerns to rest before he debuted in the league: Is the simulator used for golf’s new indoor league accurate?
In a match between Jupiter Golf Links and Los Angeles Golf Club earlier this month, Tiger Woods hit a 101-yard wedge shot 131 yards, his ball splashing into a virtual water hazard over the green. The perplexed look on his face said it all — Woods doesn’t overshoot greens by 30 yards, and he wasn’t the first or last golfer in the first four weeks of the league to be stumped by what the screen said his ball did. That’s why McIlroy, ahead of his first TGL match on Monday night, said he decided to do his own due diligence.
“So tech-wise and numbers-wise, look, I’ve had the same concerns, I guess, just because I hadn’t obviously played a match,” McIlroy said on Tuesday at Pebble Beach, where he’ll make his 2025 PGA Tour debut. “I went in there on Wednesday and I brought two other launch monitors with me. I brought my GC Quad, I brought my TrackMan. Obviously hitting balls into the screen and every number was virtually identical. That put my concerns to bed, which was really good.”
There’s a reason that tour pros use portable Trackman launch monitors and the Foresight Sports’ GCQuad as their crutch on tour for detecting any data point you could possibly dream up when it comes to ball flight. Those two products are tried and tested, and they’re considered the best on the market for top-level pros. But Woods, with McIlroy a co-founder in the league, has an exclusive multi-year partnership with Full Swing Simulators that he signed in 2015. Now the company — which also produces top-of-the-line launch monitors — is the official technology partner of TGL. It’s just not the average tour pro’s preference.
That’s why it hasn’t just been McIlroy who has felt the need to cross-examine the TGL tech. Sahith Theegala and his LAGC teammates also brought out various launch monitors during their TGL pre-match warm-up, apparently to the dismay of the Full Swing representatives. But they felt it was necessary. For the TGL product to be successful, the players need to be confident in the numbers at play.
It turns out the discrepancies fans are seeing on the ESPN broadcast might not necessarily be a distance detection problem, but rather an adjustment period for players hitting shots at a giant screen in an arena.
The issue of depth perception can impact shots significantly. Theegala said the forward tee box — which TGL uses for shots 70 yards and in — can make you feel like you need to attack the shot with a steeper path, and that can cause the ball to fly farther. Shane Lowry echoed that sentiment, noting that with a full shot, it’s difficult to trust that if you start the shot by hitting into the left side of the screen, it’s not going to continue veering offline once the ball is no longer physically in the air.
“I think the big thing for us is you’re hitting into a screen. It’s obviously a big screen, but when you’re playing outside you’ve got some sort of connection to the target, right? This is what we grew up doing, this is what we know. So when you get in there, it’s very difficult or hard to be like OK, I’m going to aim, you know, on the right half of the screen or the left half of the screen and trust that it’s actually going to do what you want it to do,” McIlroy said.
The pros are adjusting to new elements. Bunker shots have been another factor — the sand, which is reportedly the same used at Augusta National, is supported by turf, not dirt or gravel. Xander Schauffele has said that he could feel the difference during greenside bunker shots. The granules also don’t retain moisture in an indoor arena, so the sandy areas are watered before the match begins. “Once we get in there, it starts to dry up,” McIlroy said. “So the bunker shot I hit last night, yeah, it felt like my club was going through flour instead of sand.”
These speed bumps are part of the deal — TGL is a novel idea, with never-before-seen technology and everyone involved in the league is experimenting as they go. That is no secret. A little Trackman verification never hurts.
“Look, these are things that you learn on the fly,” McIlroy said. “This is a startup, it’s four weeks old.”
Required reading
(Top photo: Megan Briggs / TGL via Getty Images)
