The “T” in TGL doesn’t stand for travel. But on the cusp of its second season, the skilled indoor simulator league has adopted some distinctly tour-like parts. The venue stays the identical: the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. But in each match, every staff will play a custom-designed hole impressed by town it represents.
Tiger Woods’ staff, for example, will tackle a par-5 referred to as “The Jup Life,” with an island inexperienced and a digital rendering of Jupiter’s purple lighthouse looming within the background. Rory McIlroy’s squad, in the meantime, will take care of “Storrowed,” a snaking par-5 framed by the Charles River and Storrow Drive.
Advertisement
You get the image: fanciful holes, real-world landmarks.
On the obvious stage, the concept is branding. Anchoring every staff to a recognizable place underscores civic identification and, in idea, helps domesticate fan loyalty. But there’s one thing else happening right here, too. Like all considerate golf architects, the designers behind these holes – amongst them Gil Hanse, Beau Welling and Agustín Pizá – are attempting to create a way of place.
Which is central to golf’s enchantment. The greatest programs are transportive. They take you on a journey by way of a memorable panorama, formed by unmistakably native options. Every spherical can really feel like a type of travel, even when the terrain is imagined, the landmarks are digital, and you’re watching out of your sofa.
Or can it? As know-how mediates extra of each day life, the road between the bodily and the digital retains blurring. Fiction borrows from actuality, and actuality more and more resembles a simulation. In that sense, TGL’s new holes really feel very a lot of their time – and consistent with the place golf finds itself today, a conventional recreation testing its boundaries and experimenting with new codecs.
Advertisement
Simulation has its limits, although. I grew up in Boston, and as a lot as I admire a digital rendering of my hometown, I additionally know I’m probably not on Storrow Drive if I can’t hear a Mass-hole honking or think about a supply truck about to wedge itself underneath an overpass. And I’m undecided I’m in L.A., both, if there’s no smog, brake lights or creeping anxiousness about being late. TGL’s L.A. hole, dubbed “Showtime,” has the ocean and a play on the Hollywood signal, however not one of the relaxation.
In that sense, the digital league works as type of primetime escapism, and I’ve little doubt it alerts the place elements of the sport are headed. In the long run, extra golfers will “play” with headsets on and “travel” immediately to far-flung programs. But greater than something, the league’s new holes sharpen my appreciation for what can’t be replicated. A digital lighthouse can body a shot properly. It can’t provide you with wind off the water or the salt within the air. That’s one other means of claiming that I would tune in to TGL for the spectacle, however I’ll look elsewhere for my golf and travel.
There’s no faking the actual factor.
3 issues I’m considering
7 Mile Beach Opens: I’d heard about this challenge for thus lengthy that I’d begun to assume it is likely to be a simulation. But that is actual: After a number of delays, 7 Mile Beach, a Mike Clayton and DeVries design on a dreamy coastal website in Tasmania is formally open. It tops my want record for 2026.
Better late than by no means, 7 Mile Beach opened this month. William Watt-Contours Agency
Rodeo Dunes rides on: This first 18-hole course is completed, and a second is within the works, together with a 7.5-acre Himalayas-style placing course, slated for completion in 2027, when the clubhouse can be anticipated to be prepared. Amid a blizzard of exercise at Rodeo Dunes, within the chop hills lower than an hour from downtown Denver, possession has put out a name for “founders” – a membership program whose advantages embrace free play for spouses and youngsters and half-price inexperienced charges for accompanied company, amongst many different perks. The founders deposit is $95,000 by way of Dec. 31. More information here.
Advertisement
Travel Planning Tips? As I map out my very own 2026 travel plans (St. George, Utah, the Dominican Republic and New Zealand are already on the docket), I’d welcome ideas on public-access programs and locations that deserve extra consideration. It’s an enormous world with greater than 58,000 programs, so I do know my protection has loads of gaps. Any strategies on which I must fill first? My electronic mail is [email protected].
The submit What TGL’s new hole designs reveal about golf and travel appeared first on Golf.