TGL Power Rankings Update: Areas for Improvement after 3 weeks
By James Monday
We have now made it through 3 matchdays for TGL and it has been a mixed bag in terms of quality, even though the ratings have been very solid to start. I would say overall I have enjoyed my viewing experience of the new league, but I think the product in its current form can't be the optimal version of it. If TMRW Sports isn't looking to improve the product, I don't think the shelf life of TGL is very long. One thing not involved with the matches that they should do is license out the TGL holes to any of the big simulator companies (TopGolf, X Golf, etc.), and give recreational golfers the chance to play the TGL holes for themselves. Letting regular people get the feel and familiarization "first-hand" on these holes will go a long way in understanding the worth and the value of the performances we're getting from the pros.
I think the TGL can address some of their issues with a few key fixes.
First, determine who your target audience actually is. Is your target audience the die-hard golf fan, or is it the casual sports viewer that you're looking to capture in social media clips or as they're channel surfing on a Monday or Tuesday night at 7 or 9 pm? It feels like they're trying to capture both sides of the aisle, and it's falling flat in both areas.
They'd be better off leaning into the absurd with their product because ultimately the younger viewers are going to be more drawn to the funkier outcomes. They can also make the television product more interesting by flipping the singles and the triples. The pacing of the triples portion of the matches is so much better than the singles, and I think that the closing stretch of the matches being the fast-paced triples would bring more variability into play in the ends of matches.
Second, the tech and the holes need to improve. We saw during the Jupiter Links-LA match that clearly, the tech being used is not perfect (there's no world in which Tiger Woods is missing a wedge shot this poorly on a real course), and it led to a change in the yardages being used for the front tee box. Clearly, the ball tracking in the stadium is a little off and needs to be refined.
On top of that, the actual holes need to be more interesting. The golf balls stop moving too quickly on the holes and are bailing these guys out for missing spots. Also, the design of most of the holes is not different enough from normal holes seen on the Tour to make the product more interesting than a Tour event. For next season, they need to get funky with the hole setups. Make the lengths crazy, get some conditions involved (please oh please figure out how to make wind work on these holes), and let some absurdity run rampant on the course.
Finally, ESPN needs to improve the broadcast. There are times when Matt Barrie goes to ask one of the players wearing the earpiece a question, but the audio cuts out or the player doesn't hear them, and we're left with an awkward amount of dead air on the telecast. A second commentator with Barrie may be able to fix this issue, but we just need to avoid those awkward pauses.
Visually, the holes lose all color when the telecast switches from the player to the feed of the virtual hole. It ends up making the hole look as visually interesting as one of the last few Marvel movies, so they just need to touch up the color grading when they make that switch. TGL is interesting, but they need to make these changes or they're going to die out. In the meantime, let's look at how my power rankings of the teams have changed now that we've seen most of the teams in action.