How was Tiger Woods’ TGL entrance?
That depends who you ask.
An unofficial poll of social media offered a general hell yeah. Social media likes Tiger Woods. Add a red shirt, a red tunnel and some dramatic fog? Can’t-miss combo.
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A tougher grader sat front-row inside the SoFi Center on Tuesday night. How would Tiger’s son Charlie, who was slugging a Sprite alongside some buddies, score his dad’s entrance? Four out of 10, he told ESPN’s Marty Smith. Ouch.
But perhaps the only important perspective came from Woods himself, who couldn’t stop grinning in the moments after he’d emerged to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” dropped the hammer and laced the opening tee shot down the center?
“That was awesome,” he said. “That was the best.”
It’s all an optimistic blend of past, present and future, this TGL endeavor. Woods embodies that. He’s 49 years old and it’s been a half-decade since he contended in a PGA Tour event but he’s still the sport’s biggest draw, and this league was constructed with his talents and his aura in mind. There’s no shortage of nostalgia in this league’s DNA, then, even as it tries to push the sport into the future. The T in TGL stands (unofficially, as it turns out) for Tomorrow. It was fitting that Woods debuted Tomorrow’s Golf League to yesterday’s music. “Eye of the Tiger” was released in 1982, 27 years before Charlie was born. It was a little on the nose. That didn’t much matter.
Before long, Tuesday’s competition turned into a bit of a dud. For the team in red, an early deficit turned into a big-time blowout. Y’know that phrase “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry?” By the end Woods did both.
But big-picture, TGL’s Week 2 left us with three burning questions.
Look, it’ll take some time for every squad to get its bearings in a brand-new arena playing what is at least a half-new sport. But Jupiter Links Golf Club, consisting on this night of Woods, Max Homa and Kevin Kisner, was bad. Like, bad bad. Los Angeles Golf Club — Justin Rose, Sahith Theegala and Collin Morikawa — drubbed ’em, 12-1.
“We were entertaining,” Woods said post-round. “We hit a lot of shots. I think the people here, they got to see how bad pros can be. It was just a boat race.”
Kisner seemed particularly ill-prepared for the endeavor. The longtime fan-favorite Tour pro is a delight on every broadcast he joins — and will be doing that full-time going forward — but the TGL is a bomber’s league, and his performance off the tee told an unfortunate story. He hit just one of three fairways and averaged just 159.6 mph ball speed with driver, 12 mph behind the next-slowest.
But Woods, who appeared healthy and showed off plenty of speed, nevertheless offered a blunt self-assessment.
“The walking is not the issue,” he said. “It’s my game is not very good.”
If there’s hope for Jupiter it’s that Woods will figure out the screen, Homa will be a reliable presence and they can draw energy from the arrival of Tom Kim, their fourth teammate, who is known for igniting underdogs in team match play.
“We’ve called Tom and asked him to fly on out here, live in this thing for a little while,” Homa said.
“What’s [Tom] thinking right now? Woods asked. “Oh my God.”
Anyone who has ever played golf knows just how difficult it is to stay cheery when you’re playing bad golf. It was a gift, then, that Kisner produced the most memorable moment of the night on the 14th hole when he bladed a bunker shot off the pin, sending his teammates ducking for cover — and then into hysterics.
“We honestly didn’t think that anyone could possibly get hit in here,” Woods said; had the ball not hit the pin it would have ended up in the stands. “But that was one of the funniest moments I’ve ever seen, Kiz hitting that shot like that. We were just dying.”
