TGL made its debut on Tuesday night at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, unveiling a new world of simulation golf featuring hammer throws, shot clocks and much more.
The Bay Golf Club, featuring Wyndham Clark, Shane Lowry and Ludvig Åberg, dominating the debut matchup 9-2 over New York Golf Club, which features Rickie Fowler, Matt Fitzpatrick and Xander Schauffele.
TGL promised to mix simulator and traditional golf with technological innovation into a revolutionary new competition featuring the best professional golfers in the world.
Here’s a look at what we learned about the new rules, technology and more from TGL’s debut night:
Debut night: Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy’s TGL is unlike anything golf has seen
What is “The Hammer” in TGL?
Golf fans got a first glimpse of “The Hammer” on Tuesday night, which is a rule which allows teams to increase the value of a specific hole throughout the contest.
A pre-match coin toss determines which team will begin the game with possession of “The Hammer.” The possessing team can then throw it during any hole.
If “The Hammer” is thrown and accepted, the point total of the hole increases by one. For example, holes normally count for 1 point. A thrown Hammer increases the value to 2 points. Teams must accept a Hammer throw if it occurs prior to the hole’s first shot.
Wyndham Clark said the rule is one of many ways TGL forces players out of their comfort zone of traditional golf and into new strategies to win the competition.
“Last night in the simulation we were down 6-0 after like three holes,” Clark said of TGL test rounds. “We threw a bunch of hammers and they made putts and we didn’t know what we were doing, and I think as we learned how to play this, and it is a game, it’s not necessarily pure golf, there’s a little bit more game and trick to it, and I feel like we got really comfortable with it.”
Expect more of “The Hammer” in future TGL matches
TGL’s debut match produced a lopsided result as The Bay Golf Club went ahead quickly on New York Golf Club and never looked back.
In postgame press conferences, players from The Bay Golf Club said the blowout nature of the first match produced fewer throws of “The Hammer” as the team played conservatively.
“We were up a certain amount of points, and we thought if we threw the hammer and then they hit a great shot and throw the hammer back, next thing you know we lose three or four points and they’re right back in it,” Clark said. “That’s honestly what our strategy was, and I know it didn’t maybe make for the best TV because we probably wanted more hammers and people wanted more doubles, and maybe we’ll do that more in the future, but it was our first time, we wanted to get a W under the belt, so maybe we’ll adjust going forward.”
Rickie Fowler acknowledged that “The Hammer” was used much more prominently in walkthrough TGL rounds as teams experimented with how to successfully incorporate it into their strategy.
TGL hole design gets creative
TGL debuted golf course hole design unbound by the restrictions of daily maintenance, economics and reality.
Players teed off on holes featuring volcanic out of bounds territory, three separate fairways of varying difficulty and psychedelic designs, opening the spectrum of what is possible moving forward with TGL.
“I feel like the possibilities are almost endless,” Clark said. “You can put a stadium in each one of the cities that owns a team. You could change the golf holes to where they’re tailor made for The Bay Golf Club so that it’s holes just for us, and that’s our home course advantage.
“There’s so many different things you could do. You could obviously make it bigger. There’s a lot of stuff you could do.”
TGL green will take some familiarization
One area players struggled with in the TGL debut was the course green, which is made of artificial material and changes undulation with each hole to match the simulated hole.
Shane Lowry hit a toe shank in his singles match against Rickie Fowler while Xander Schauffele also hit a not-so-great chip while learning to deal with the new surface.
“There’s certain — there’s grain that comes into play,” Lowry said. “There’s a certain part, it’s easy, it’s downgrain, but into the grain, honestly, I spent 30 minutes out there today and then I hit that shot this evening, so I was like still trying to figure it out.
“The next time I come out here I’ll be trying to figure it out again … That’s why when you’re hitting your second shots, we are actually standing there on the screen and going, where do we need to miss this, because it does come into play.”
Eric J. Wallace is deputy sports editor for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at ejwallace@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: TGL debut: What is the hammer rule? How does it affect scoring?
