PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — One year and 10 months after the first ball was struck in competition by the men in the TMRW Golf League (TGL), the women’s equivalent made its debut with a sensational splash on Sunday.
In the inaugural WTGL match, golf greats Lydia Ko and Michelle Wie West were among the six players in action who treated an audience of 1,500 fans at the indoor SoFi Center to some spectacular shot-making, several dramatic near-misses and a great deal of entertaining banter between the mic’d-up players.
Following the example set by the TGL, the venue and the atmosphere were very different for traditional golf fans with nonstop music, cheerleaders in the stands, a shot clock, a rotating green and a giant simulator screen.
As was the case with the launch of the men’s TGL early last year, time will tell how successful this new women’s venture will become. However, the early signs are promising and the fans packed into SoFi Center on Sunday afternoon will certainly vouch for that after watching Wie West and her Los Angeles Golf Club beat Ko and her New York Golf Club teammates 3-1.
Wie West came agonizingly close to registering a hole-in-in-one at the par-3 seventh as Los Angeles built a narrow 2-1 lead over New York after the first nine holes of team play. LA, helped by superior putting, then increased their advantage over the closing six holes in the singles encounters to seal the win.
For Ko — who has seen it all in women’s golf after building a glittering resume that includes 23 LPGA Tour victories, three major titles, LPGA Hall of Fame membership and a complete set of Olympic gold, silver and bronze medals — the potential impact of the WTGL could not be brighter.
“Golf in general has become much more than a 72-hole stroke-play event,” said Ko, who became the LPGA Tour’s youngest winner at 15 years, four months and two days with her victory at the 2012 CPKC Women’s Open. “The content creator space has grown a lot in golf. There’s been different tours and different styles of how this sport has been played, and TGL has been around for a couple seasons as well. Every year it’s gotten better, I think, in the sense of the fan experience and the player experience as well.
“To be involved in something like this, I think golf is only going to benefit from it … It just brings a lot of generations together, and potentially a different demographic to watch the game. I think we’re played on a few different outlets as well, having people that normally watch ESPN or ION, ABC. It brings people that don’t necessarily turn on Golf Channel every week, and that was one of the big purposes of this week. This is such an amazing opportunity for us as a brand and I think for the sport in general.”
Sunday’s showdown was the first of 10 regular-season matches that will be played in a round-robin format between the WTGL’s five teams from Nov. 8-Dec. 15. The WTGL’s inaugural season will then conclude with the playoffs, featuring two semifinal matches on Dec. 20 and 21 followed by a best-of-three finals on Dec. 22 and 23 to determine the inaugural WTGL champion.
The WTGL follows in the footsteps of the TGL, an indoor golf league founded in August 2022 by TMRW Sports, a high-profile venture formed by Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and former NBC Sports executive Mike McCarley in partnership with the PGA Tour.
The first TGL match took place on Jan. 7, 2025, and by year’s end, the TGL had certainly proved to be a success by utilizing fast-paced, two-hour matches, shot clocks, mic’d-up players and unique layouts in their high-tech arena.
The league also skewed younger than traditional golf with an average audience aged in the early 50s, while fans widely praised the TGL as a fun winter golf fix and a driver of simulator tech growth.
However, the second season of TGL experienced some early-season ratings dips and audience volatility before rallying for a slightly higher number of total unique viewers.
Whether the WTGL also stumbles once it reaches its second season in late 2027 remains to be seen. For the moment, though, New York Golf Club’s Alison Lee is confident that the future will remain extremely bright for women’s golf.
“Our purses are growing up, and we get to play the most amazing golf courses we’ve ever played,” Lee said. “For people to experience and see us play in a different setting, in a more intimate and personal setting, is very different, and hopefully it can bring more eyeballs to the game.
“At the end of the day, that’s what we want. I feel like we have an amazing product. All the women on tour are superstars. They’re so good at what they do, and I think people don’t give them their flowers. Hopefully this can bring more eyeballs to the women’s game, and just because I know these girls are so, so, so incredibly talented and really good, I hope that more people can see that through this.”