TGL Set for Debut Tonight on ESPN With Nearly 70 Cameras Capturing a New Era for Golf

After year-long delay, some of pro golf's best players will tee off at huge SoFi Center

Tonight marks the debut of TGL (Tomorrow’s Golf League) on ESPN, with some of the world’s greatest golfers facing off in a two-hour competition in the league’s SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, a 250,000-sq.-ft. venue offering a first for the world of professional golf: playing under a roof.

According to TMRW Sports CTO Andrew Macaulay, TGL aims to turn a sport that has previously required acres and acres of land into something that could fit inside an arena but also provides plenty of space for golf shots.

Rory McIlroy is one of the three co-founders of TGL golf, which tees off tonight.

“The simulator screen is so far away from the tee boxes that you see the ball curve as it is carried into the computer-generated world,” Macaulay explains. “When the golfers get to the green end of things, it is all real life. It’s an interesting hybrid, and I think the fan watching on TV will quickly forget about going back and forth between the real world and the digital world.”

The venue houses a massive golf-simulator screen (64 ft. wide x 53 ft. tall) and an equally massive, 3,800-sq.-ft. Green Zone putting area on a 41-yard-wide rotating turntable. Under the putting area of the turntable are 600 actuators that can change the contours and slope of the green. Toss in an onsite crowd encouraged to make some noise and indoor lighting created by a former WWE lighting designer, and tonight is shaping up as a special one for TGL and the world of professional golf.

TGL has been a long time coming. It was set to debut last February, but a storm in West Palm Beach, FL, in November 2023 destroyed the membrane of the cloth dome covering SoFi Center, requiring a new facility and a new approach. The extra year, Macauley says, allowed the effort to take another step forward, tweaking the virtual side, figuring out all the best places to place cameras, and producing some unique angles with, for example, a live drone shot and super slo-mo on the tee boxes. EVS XtraMotion will also be available, allowing super slo-mo to be produced from any camera.

TGL has allowed some golf social-media influencers to step into the tee box at SoFi Center, but tonight the action begins for real with PGA TOUR professionals facing off.

“We certainly didn’t waste the gift of an extra year,” he says. “We made the screen bigger because the building around it changed and we could go bigger. The holes that we created were fine-tuned even more, and now some of them have cool parts of the digital world. For example, at least one hole has gone from being in the mountains to in the vineyards to the Scottish Highlands because we had a lot more time to have it played and then we decided to change it. I think we have been able to make about 20% of TGL visually better and cooler.”

So, what, exactly, is TGL? Owned by TMRW Sports, TGL is a joint venture of legendary golfers Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and TMRW Sports Group CEO/co-founder Mike McCarley. The vision for TMRW Sports is to bring together sports, media, and entertainment in new ways (investors come from across the professional- sports landscape, including Derek Jeter, Shohei Ohtani, Shaquille O’Neal, Lewis Hamilton, and Serena Williams), and tonight’s effort is the biggest to date: two of the six teams (each comprising four PGA TOUR stars) compete over 15 regular-season matches, a playoff, and a best-of-three finals on March 24 and 25 to determine the champion. TGL’s matches will primarily be in primetime on Mondays and Tuesdays, each match scheduled for approximately two hours (the first competition is three-on-three alternate shot; the second competition of each event is one-on-one play).

TGL’s technology mix will keep things moving. A 40-second clock will allow every shot to be broadcast, and there will be unprecedented audio access, with all players wearing microphones. The broadcast will also offer advanced shot data, and the production plan calls for more than 60 robotic and embedded cameras throughout the field of play.

Railcams will give director Jonathan Evans additional angles of coverage.

TMRW Sports VP, Content, jeff Neubarth says the broadcast will have 73 camera sources, of which 28 are robotic and 10 are virtual and within the simulator environment (the 10 have six pre-programmed behaviors/flight paths, such as following the ball to the green). Including all the vendor support teams, a crew of 150 will ensure that every broadcast is rock solid.

“Our compound is driven by Game Creek Video with Moonshine A and B and Edit Truck 3 onsite, along with two B units,” he says. “That gives us five trucks for [match] support, but we expanded out as we are also doing an entertainment show inside the arena. We have had to build out a front-of-house system, and we also have Game Creek Patriot onsite as a data center.”

Johnathan Evans will be directing the broadcast, which will be seen on ESPN in the U.S., on Sportsnet in Canada, and via Claro in Mexico, Latin America, and South America. Golf fans in 30 European countries, 50 African nations, and 12 Asian countries will also be able to tune in.

The competition will definitely have a different rhythm from traditional golf, in which the players hit a shot and need to walk hundreds of yards to their next shot. “When you take out the walking,” says Evans, “the pace is so much faster, and it gets much more akin to other sports. Here we don’t have any downtime. The players for both teams know what they’re hitting, and, when they tee off, it’s just bang, bang, bang. There’s a little bit of a break when they walk to the green, but the longest walk is still under 50 yards. Even the shortest par 3 on a regular course is longer than that.”

Because each match has a two-hour TV window, a 42-second clock keeps things moving, forcing golfers to make quicker decisions with respect to club selection, green-side shot selection, and putting.

“The golfers won’t have time to walk up and analyze a 30-ft. putt,” explains Evans. “If they want multiple views, they will need to rely on their teammates, and then the other team can call a timeout to ice the golfer. We will have a lot of things from other sports that fans know and love.”

Among those things are specialty cameras and microphone locations that are simply impossible on a regular golf course. Because of that new level of access, Evans says, from a directing standpoint, the rhythm will be very different from regular golf coverage, which typically goes to a closeup shot of the golfer’s face on a tee box to see the reaction to a shot or to the classic handheld shot from behind a golfer on the fairway.

“Sometimes we will go straight to the simulator,” Evans notes, “but, other times, we can stay wide in the venue and [show the golfer watching the simulator]. We’re not just staying in the real world; we want to create an atmosphere in the virtual world. There are so many things that have never been done before, and that makes it truly exciting.”

Adds Neubarth, “There will also be four IMAG screens in the venue, two on each side, and that will allow the golfers to see not only the shot replay but also their reactions.”

One other first for golf is that every shot will be truly live because there are not 18 holes with golfers playing simultaneously and not stopping for commercial breaks.

A Rovercam will be used tonight to get up close and personal with TGL golfers.

“When any live golf event goes to commercial,” Evans notes, “the golfers keep playing, and, even with a limited-field event, they can’t show every shot live. The time continuum is not your friend when you are producing a live golf event, no matter what tour you are on.”

Evans is excited to have not only a drone shot but also a Railcam and a Spidercam system in the production mix. There will also be a camera above the simulator screen, about 50 ft. above the tee box — a unique shot that has never been seen in golf coverage.

“Someone’s going to hit that camera with a golf ball,” he adds, “and it’s going to be awesome as it will be different and exciting.”

The final new element for a golf event will be a crowd of around 1,500 fans encouraged to be loud and raucous (a DJ will help keep the mood elevated). Toss in the lighting-design and director work of Jason Robinson, who was at the WWE for 29 years, and the whole TGL experience is shaping up to be groundbreaking.

“Getting him to join us from the WWE was a huge plus, and lighting is part of the environment process,” says Evans. “When the New York team wins, for example, you want to see the entire building look like New York just won. The same for when the players enter the field: we want a theatrical moment for both the people onsite and the viewers at home.”