The new hall used in Season 2 of TGL, which opens on Sunday, is called a cenote. Anyone who has ever visited Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula knows that cenotes are deep, beautiful natural water holes that have become huge tourist attractions for swimming and diving. Agustín Pizza, one of TGL’s course architects, used the cenote as inspiration for a rugged par 3. There, players can take the risk of playing a long iron into the green, or drive a fairway wood or driver into the recessed “cape” behind the hole, concentrating the ball toward the putting surface.
In Pizza’s other new design, the par-4 hole setup, called Stinger, is reminiscent of Utah’s Arches National Park. On the tee shot, players must make a draw (hook?) to reach the fairway through a 50-foot-tall arch.
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Even the more traditional-looking first hole at TGL, a par-5 called Stone & Steeple, created by architect Gil Hanse, features a huge cross bunker and a stone wall that runs along the entire left side, something I’ve never seen on this side of the Atlantic.
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Gil Hanse’s original design for TGL features a rock wall along the left side of the narrow par 5. (TGL graphics)
If we’re seeing a theme here, it’s that TGL is moving further toward providing more creative opportunities for designers and players as the technology-infused league started by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy enters a critical second year in terms of retaining viewers and attracting new ones.
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“I’m going to take some time off from being governor,” Scott Armstrong, TGL’s competition and technical director, said in an interview last week. “In Season 1, we needed to step over the line a little bit to appease the general sports fan without alienating core golfers, so we were tactical with out-of-the-box holes.
“Obviously we’re going to push the boundaries a little bit more as we expand.”
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The three new holes mentioned above will be debuted Sunday at 3pm ET on ABC by champion Atlanta Drive and New York Golf Club, the teams that opened the season and reached the finals last season. There will also be two redesigned holes per game, with each team represented in a “home” hole in a manner unique to that market. Think LA beaches and the redesigned “Hollywood” sign. San Francisco Bay Area scene including the Golden Gate Bridge. and Boston Hall, located along the waterfront of the Charles River Esplanade. All six teams in the league have their own holes that only appear in their matches, and those teams can adjust the hole setup to potentially benefit them.
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TGL’s new Bay Goff Club Hall features the Golden Gate Bridge. (TGL Graphics)
During the first year in 2025, TGL executives heard from players and fans that they were more excited about the unique hole with a Golden Tee feel than the traditional hole that looked and played. Sure, there were some quirky designs, like the hourglass-shaped spear and the Western-themed risk-reward quick draw, but it seems fans want to see PGA Tour pros tackle more holes they’d never see in real life.
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Johnson recalled that Atlanta’s Billy Horschel recently visited the TGL venue, the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The eight-time PGA Tour winner was most concerned that Hole was too foolish in his startup venture. “He’s completely gone to the other side,” Armstrong said with a laugh. “He was like, ‘We need to keep doing more of this.'”
New hole designs continue to evolve as the season progresses, and even traditional architects like Hanse and Beau Welling are being asked to get creative. “It’s going to be exciting,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong believes the appeal is that players are now more accustomed than ever to hitting the simulator in front of large crowds, and the next step is to better showcase their skills. His big thought in the offseason was “shot-making.”
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The new TGL Hole Stinger requires players to form a drive under an archway. (TGL Graphics)
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“We all want to see the world’s best players make cool plays with a golf ball, and that’s what these new holes are doing,” Armstrong said. “Like the Stinger, they’re going to be forced to hit a certain shot. They really have no choice but to go under the rock. You can’t go around it. Players have been trying, but you have to go under and hit the hook to do it.”
“I’ve seen them come in and play stingers and they just want to keep hitting. It’s fun to watch.”
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Season 2 expanded TGL’s greenery by 38%.
As Golf Digest outlined in October, beyond the new holes and brighter, more realistic graphics, the biggest changes to play come in what TGL calls the “green zone.” Last season’s greens were smaller than Tour standards at 3,800 square feet, with a significant hump in the center and three actuator areas – 600 pistons – that changed the level of the surface on each hole. “A lot of the shots we saw last year were great shots, but they would miss the green even if it was only 12 feet away,” Armstrong said. “So the perception was that those shots weren’t very good.”
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The solution this season was to expand the green to 5,270 square feet, expand the top level by 60%, and have two large actuator areas instead of three small actuators. There are now 12 pin positions, up from seven a year ago.
“As far as setting up the course, you really have the freedom to use whatever pins you want, so it’s a lot of fun,” Armstrong said. “But as you get closer to that bunker, there are still some pins that are very tricky.”
Yes, it’s a bunker. They confused some players early on and saw some pretty unusual shots — hello, Kevin Kisner. There are now two bunkers instead of three, and the deepest bunker has been removed. The rest are a little more flat. The composition of the sand itself is the same, but as last year’s season progressed, TGL officials realized they needed to include some moisture in the sand to keep it from becoming too fluffy under the lights.
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TGL announced Monday for television viewers that the broadcast will be similar to that of a Tour event in that a shot tracer will be shown from the ball to the screen and graphics will be shown showing where players are standing after the shot in comparison on the course. Notably, TGL uses a total of 79 cameras to film the play. By comparison, the network uses 12 to 20 for NFL games.
The broadcast team will be almost the same as last year, and will be led by Roberto Castro, a former PGA Tour player who has been involved in TGL’s competition development from the early stages and is well versed in play and technology.
In terms of their own knowledge, the players have been through this season, and what Armstrong saw in his first year was that the more games he played, the more competitive he became. It went from being just a novelty to another way to show how talented they are.
“They would come in as teams of three and play the course and hit certain tee shots where they wanted to go in the match,” Armstrong said. “We’ll have what we call a ‘shootaround,’ and they’ll be very competitive there as well.”
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One player stood out in his preparation, but his identity probably won’t surprise you.
“Keegan Bradley,” Armstrong said. “He definitely hit more balls than anyone, so we thought about naming the redesigned practice field in the game after him.”
It will be several months before we know if that will lead to a team victory at the Boston Common. But in its second year, TGL promises to bring even more technology to the table to highlight all the talent performing at SoFi Center.
