Indoor golf league that Woods, McIlroy envisioned finally has debut match

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PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — Ludvig Aberg will be the answer to a trivia question: He made the first birdie in TGL history.

And with that, the indoor golf competition that Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy had envisioned for years was finally underway.

TGL had its debut match Tuesday night, with Rickie Fowler, Matt Fitzpatrick and Xander Schauffele of New York Golf Club taking on Shane Lowry, Wyndham Clark and Aberg of The Bay Golf Club in the opener.

Lowry struck the first shot at 9:15 p.m. Four minutes later, the first hole in TGL history was complete when Aberg rolled in a 9-footer for the first point in league history. Yes, it moves that quickly.

“This was just a dream conjured up,” Woods said on the ESPN broadcast. “Rory and I were talking about it; it’s hard to believe that dream came into reality and we were able to take golf into another stratosphere, really.”

Woods and McIlroy — part of the brain trust that put together this venture — were there, as expected. DJ Khaled was there too, milling about while players were warming up, showing off his swing with an imaginary club.

The venue is a 250,000-square-foot facility at Palm Beach State College. Players hit some shots into a video screen, some off real grass, some off turf, and the bunkers are not just real sand — it’s sand from Augusta National Golf Club, the same sand Woods has at his home practice facility. It’s super high tech, with data collected off every shot. Players wore microphones, there were betting options and fans surrounded the “course” in an intimate arena where music blared and noise was welcomed.

Once teams moved within 50 yards of the pin, they headed to a short-game complex — with a green that sits on a 41-yard-wide turntable and has about 600 devices underneath to change the contours.

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Woods loved it when some fans were, let’s say, not exactly quiet as Clark lined up a putt on one of the early holes.

“You don’t normally hear that at events,” Woods said. “You’re going to hear that here.”

Woods is expected to debut for his Jupiter Links club on Jan. 14. McIlroy’s debut could be Jan. 27 when Boston Common plays Jupiter Links. The regular season goes until March 4. There are 24 players — six teams of four — and the top four teams advance to the playoffs with a best-of-three championship series two weeks before the Masters.

Each team activates three players for a match, and the 15-hole competitions will be done in about two hours. It’ll all be shown on ESPN platforms, often in prime time. The league has been in the works for a few years; the original plan was for it to start last year, but a storm slowed construction and organizers pushed the debut back to 2025.

“It’s not traditional golf, yes,” Woods said. “But it is golf. And that’s the main thing.”