Tech-infused TGL enters Season 2 touting quirkier holes and a demand for more shotmaking

A new hole being used for Season 2 of TGL, which begins on Sunday, is called Cenote. For anyone who’s been to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, they know that cenotes are deep and beautiful natural pits of water that have become huge tourist attractions for swimming and diving. Agustin Piza, one of TGL’s course designers, used the cenotes as inspiration for a stout par 3 in which players can play a risky long iron to the green, or hit a fairway wood or driver to a concave “cape” behind the hole that will funnel the ball toward the putting surface.

In another of Piza’s new designs, for a par-4 hole called Stinger, the setting is reminiscent of Utah’s Arches National Park. The tee shot requires players to draw—maybe hook?—their drive through a 50-foot-tall arch to reach the fairway.

Even in the more traditional-looking first TGL hole created by architect Gil Hanse­—a par 5 called Stone & Steeple—there are huge cross bunkers and a stone wall that runs along the entire left side, something that’s never been seen on this side of the Atlantic.

Gil Hanse's first design for TGL features a rock wall along the left side of the narrow par 5. (TGL graphic)

If you’re catching a theme here, it’s that TGL is moving further toward more out-of-the-box opportunities for its designers and players as the tech-infused league started by Tiger Woods and Rory McIroy enters a critical second year in terms of retaining viewers and attracting new ones.

“We’re taking the governor off a bit,” Scott Armstrong, the chief of TGL’s competitions and technology, said in an interview last week. “For Season 1, we were tactical with the outside-the-box holes because we had to straddle the line a little and not alienate the core golfer but also appease the general sports fan.

“Now, as we expand, we’ll obviously start pushing the limit a little more.”

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The aforementioned three new holes will make their debut at 3 p.m. ET Sunday on ABC when the season opens with the teams that reached the finals last season, the champion Atlanta Drive and New York Golf Club. There also will be two redesigned holes per match, with each team being represented with a “home” hole in a way that’s unique to it market. Think beaches and a redesigned “Hollywood” sign in L.A.; a San Francisco Bay Area scene that includes the Golden Gate Bridge; and a Boston hole set along the water of the Charles River Esplanade. All six teams in the league will have their own hole that appears only in their matches, and those teams will be able to tailor setup of the hole that might be to their advantage.

TGL's new Bay Gof Club hole features the Golden Gate Bridge. (TGL graphic)

What the TGL executives heard from players and fans alike during the 2025 inaugural year is that they were more enamored of the unique holes with the Golden Tee flair than those that looked and played more traditionally. Yes, there were some quirky designs—the hour-glass-shaped Spear and western-themed risk-reward Quick Draw immediately come to mind—but it seems fans want to see the PGA Tour pros challenged even more on holes they would never see in real life.

Johnson recalled a recent visit to the TGL venue, SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., by Atlanta’s Billy Horschel. The eight-time PGA Tour winner was among the most concerned about holes maybe being too goofy in the start-up venture. “He’s totally gone to the other side now,” Armstrong said with a laugh. “He was, like, ‘We’ve got to keep doing more of these.’”

New hole designs will continue to be rolled out as the season progresses, and even the more traditional architects like Hanse and Beau Welling are being asked to push themselves on creativity. “It’s going to be exciting,” Armstrong said.

The appeal, Armstrong believes, is now that players are more comfortable with hitting on a simulator in front of a big crowd, their next step is to better show off their skills. A key thought of his in the offseason: “shotmaking.”

The new TGL hole Stinger will force players to shape their drives under an archway. (TGL graphic)

“We all want to see the best players in the world do cool things with the golf ball, and that’s what these new holes are doing,” Armstrong said. “They’re going to be forced to hit certain shots, like on Stinger. There really is no option than to go under the rock. You can’t go around it; players have tried, but you’ve got to go under and hit a hook to do it.

"I've seen these guys come in and play Stinger, and they just want to keep hitting and hitting It's fun to watch."

TGL's green has been enlarged by 38 percent for Season 2.

As outlined by Golf Digest in October, beyond the new holes and graphics that will be far brighter and more realistic, the biggest change in the play will come in what TGL calls the “GreenZone.” Last season, the green was smallish by tour standards at 3,800 square feet, had a sizeable hump in the middle and featured three areas of actuators—the 600 pistons that changed the level of the surface for each hole. “A lot of shots that we saw last year were great shots, but they’d miss the green, even if they ended up only 12 feet away” Armstrong said. “So that perception was that those shots weren’t very good.”

The solution for this season was expanding the green to 5,270 square feet, expanding the top tier by 60 percent and having two larger areas of actuators instead of three smaller ones. There are now 12 possible pin positions instead of the seven from a year ago.

"Course set-up-wise, we’re really freed up to use any of the pins we want, which is fun,” Armstrong said. “But there are still some really tricky pins if you get close to that one bunker.”

Oh yes, the bunkers. They confounded some of the players early on and we saw some rather unusual shots—hello Kevin Kisner. There are now two bunkers instead of three, and the deepest one has been removed. The remaining ones are a bit flatter. As for the sand itself, the makeup is the same, but as the season went along last year, TGL officials realized they needed to keep some moisture in it, lest it become too fluffy under the lights.

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For TV viewers, TGL announced on Monday that the broadcast will look more like those for tour events, in that there will be a shot tracer from the ball to the screen, and graphics will show an on-course comparison of where players stand after shots. Remarkably, TGL uses a total of 79 cameras to capture the play. By comparison, the networks use 12 to 20 for an NFL game.

The broadcast team will be much the same as last year, with the notable edition of former PGA Tour player Roberto Castro, who is highly knowledgeable about the play and technology, having worked on TGL’s competitive development since the early stages.

In terms of their own knowledge, the players now have a season of experience behind them, and what Armstrong saw as the first year went on is that the more matches they played, the more competitive they became. It went from a seat-of-their-pants novelty to another way to show how talented they are.

"They were coming in as three-player teams, playing the course and htting specific tee shots they'd use in a match and where they wanted to be aimed," Armstrong said. "We'll have what we call 'shootarounds," and these guys get super competitive in those as well."

One player stood out in doing his prep, and his identity probably will not surprise you.

"Keegan Bradley," Armstrong said. "We thought of naming our redesigned driving range in the game after him because he definitely hit the most balls of anybody."

Whether that translates into a team victory for Boston Common will take a few months to play out. But Year 2 of TGL promises to offer more tech to highlight all the talent performing in the SoFi Center.