After three blowout matches, TGL wanted some aggressive aptitude, and the start-up league acquired simply that on Monday evening.
Tiger Woods, Tom Kim, and Kevin Kisner of Jupiter Hyperlinks Golf Membership took down the closely favored Boston Widespread Golf Membership in extra time by a rating of 4-to-3. Boston arrived at its TGL debut with all three of its gamers ranked inside the high 25 on the earth: four-time main winner Rory McIlroy, 2013 Masters champion Adam Scott, and present Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley. Then again, Jupiter Hyperlinks had a mean world rating of 664 getting into Monday’s match.
However none of that mattered.
On quite a few events, Kim, the star of the present, stepped as much as the plate and delivered. He made a number of putts that wound up halving the outlet. He additionally got here near recording the first hole-in-one in TGL historical past, as his ball settled simply two toes away from the pin on the twelfth gap. Three holes later, Kim nearly holed out from the sand for a birdie, a mere moments after leaving his third shot within the bunker. He did this all whereas yelling, screaming, and engaging the gang, simply as he did on the Presidents Cup final September. Kim’s power is strictly what TGL wanted, particularly contemplating the snooze-fest the league’s third match turned into final week.
“I thrive in these workforce environments, and it was so good to have good companions, skilled companions,” Kim mentioned.
“I’m simply so glad we bought some extent as we speak.”
Woods, who co-founded the league with McIlroy, was thrilled with how every part turned out, particularly since his workforce received.
“[Kim] was unbelievable coming in right here,” Woods mentioned.
“We did some good work the opposite day, and as we speak it couldn’t have been a extra pleasurable show of golf, banter. Everybody within the viewers was engaged. Hopefully, all of the viewership was engaged. We, as gamers, cherished it. That is what we had envisioned for TGL: to have an expertise like this, and I believe we delivered it.”
Certainly, this made-for-TV product lastly delivered. It had unpredictability, an important facet to this enterprise contemplating how whacky and theatrical golf can rapidly turn out to be. Followers need to see golf photographs and the place these photographs find yourself — a actuality that can by no means change for so long as folks watch and play this sport. Monday’s match additionally had super banter, particularly from Woods and Kisner, who delivered a couple of one-liners that had everybody laughing. Oh, and Woods additionally recorded the primary shot-clock violation in TGL historical past, a joke that may write itself.
“I believe the character of competitors is you’re going to have some matches which are blowouts, and also you’re going to have some matches which are actually tight. I believe it was actually cool that tonight was a type of matches that was actually tight. I believe the folks within the area appeared to take pleasure in it, and hopefully the folks at dwelling appeared to take pleasure in it, too,” McIlroy mentioned.
“However that doesn’t imply that there’s going to be different matches that mightn’t be as shut. It actually helps from an leisure perspective to have it that evening, however that’s one thing that we will’t assure. That is competitors, as nicely, on the finish of the day, and we’re all attempting to beat one another as finest as we will.”
Contemplating TGL confronted some much-deserved criticism within the weeks after its debut, the league wanted a bounce-back on Monday. And fortuitously for golf’s latest enterprise, its most distinguished stars delivered in additional methods than one: followers noticed a aggressive match, loads of joshing, and on high of all of it, everybody — from these on the SoFi Middle to these watching on ESPN — was entertained from begin to end.
Jack Milko is a golf employees author for SB Nation’s Taking part in By way of. Observe him on X @jack_milko.
