PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla.—TGL VP of competition technology and operations Scott Armstrong was thisclose to giving Tiger Woods advice on his golf game.
Woods recently visited the new golf arena ahead of the league’s Jan. 7 debut, eager to test every inch of the futuristic, football field-sized playing surface. Players will tee off from trucked-in palettes of natural grass cut into custom mats, swinging towards a 65-foot simulator screen, with advanced cameras tracking the ball in flight before representing it virtually on the screen.
Thirty new holes have been created specifically to challenge golf’s best, each culminating in a real-world green area that swivels and oscillates to set up distinct surfaces. Teams of three golfers will play 15-hole matches in a mix of triples and singles formats.
Woods spent extra time in the short game area around that synthetic green, figuring out how the artificial grains played differently than the ones he’d won 82 official PGA Tour events and 15 major championships on top of. After watching Woods flub a couple chips, as Armstrong had seen previous visitors do, he opened his mouth only to see Tiger change the shape of his swing, sending a flop shot arcing into the air and landing inches from his target.
