TGL is hitting the home stretch in its regular season, going full speed towards the playoffs with 4 matches this week, bringing every team to three matches played on the season. Was the Presidents' Day triple header possibly too much TGL all at once? I would lean yes, especially with the star of one of your teams playing twice having to fly all the way across the country immediately after the biggest win of his career thus far. Nevertheless, we are 60% of the way through the regular season now, we have seen every golfer play for their teams, and the league itself is finally hitting a bit of a stride now that we're out of the woods of the opening weeks and having to over-explain everything to new viewers.
One of the biggest improvements in the play has come from the players not struggling as much coming down the ridge to one of the hole locations on the bottom shelf of the green. In the first couple matches, missing above the hole was a death sentence. But now, as we saw all Monday and Tuesday, the pros have figured out the putt, and it at least adds a bit more intrigue to holes where this shot ends up getting played.
I feel like the guy in Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech when I say this, but I'm going to: the changes made to the rules surrounding The Hammer are good. Even if teams don't have the best grasp on the strategy for The Hammer yet, it's way better watching overuse of it and having the potential for big swings in scoring than one team getting out to a lead and just holding The Hammer for the entire match, not using it once. There's still plenty to adjust with the league and its broadcast (good lord, Marty Smith needs to stop talking so much), but it's refreshing to see a sports league that isn't afraid to make changes as needed, rather than languishing through years of a diminished product before going with a watered down version of a necessary change.