A High-Tech Golf League Is Ready to Tee Off

The TGL launches with superstar players - and a bet that fans will tune into the latest bold attempt to spruce up the sport

- ANDREW BEATON

On Tuesday night, a collection of the best golfers in the world assembled for a brand new, high-stakes competition. But they didn't pull up to the first tee box at one of the sport's most prestigious courses.

In fact, they weren't even outdoors.

Instead, this group of major champions and top-10 players are betting that fans are ready to take a chance on golf like they have never seen it before-played against a giant computer screen.

The launch of TGL, a new golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in partnership with the PGA Tour, marks a foray into uncharted territory for professional golf. It's a team competition that combines simulator golf, where players hit balls into an enormous screen, with live action as players finish every hole by playing around a real green complex.

If that sounds like a concept goofy enough that the roof could cave in at any moment, well, that already happened. TGL's debut was pushed back by a year after damage to the roof at the indoor venue in Palm Beach, Fla.