Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy playing, TGL posts bounceback ratings

Turns out that having Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy on your broadcast does good things for TV ratings. Who knew?

TGL’s fourth week featured a series of firsts for the new tech-infused indoor golf league: both Woods and McIlroy head-to-head in a competitive match. Woods’ Jupiter Links Golf Club defeated McIlroy’s Boston Common Golf Club in overtime, a match that was in doubt right on through and over its allotted two-hour run time.

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy posted solid TV numbers on Monday night. (Megan Briggs/TGL/TGL via Getty Images)
Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy posted solid TV numbers on Monday night. (Megan Briggs/TGL/TGL via Getty Images)
The match averaged 864,000 viewers on ESPN, up from Week 3’s 682,000 viewers but down from the league’s debut (919,000 viewers) and second week (1 million). Week 2 featured Woods’ initial appearance in TGL, while Week 3 featured Justin Thomas and Atlanta Drive GC against Rickie Fowler and New York GC.

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Per Sports Business Journal’s Austin Karp, the match’s numbers hit their height in the 8:30-8:45 period at 1.1 million. However, that was also the time that a Duke basketball game was scheduled to begin on ESPN; the game was moved to ESPNU while TGL finished up.

Through four weeks TGL is tracking at 33% better than college basketball did in the similar broadcast window in 2024. Depending on whether you’re a glass-half-full or half-empty type, this is either a sign that TGL is holding onto an audience, or a sign that even the combined star power of Woods and McIlroy isn’t enough to prevent a slide from the league’s early high numbers.

TGL has seven regular-season nights still on its schedule, and every one of those dates will feature either Woods, McIlroy or both. (Some dates have multiple matches scheduled — Feb. 17, for instance, has all six teams in action.) Four dates’ worth of playoffs follow, right up until March 25, and TGL will be hoping that Woods and McIlroy will be in position for all of them … or that new, equally compelling storylines will surface over the course of the year.

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The Telegraph
Watch Rory McIlroy’s ‘slam dunk’ hole-in-one
james corrigan
Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 11:04 PM GMT+1·2 min read

Rory McIlroy celebrating
Rory McIlroy was playing alongside Ryder Cup team-mate Ludvig Aberg when he struck the eagle – Getty Images/Ezra Shaw
Rory McIlroy marked the first round of his PGA Tour year with that rarest of holes-in-one: an ace that did not even take a bounce or a roll before disappearing into the hole.

After starting on the 10th at Spyglass Hill in the AT&T Pro-Am, the World No 3 was one-under after six holes and bemoaning two three-putts on the 11th and 14th, a pair of par-fives that he hit in two. The best method to avoid putting woes is to allow yourself the luxury of leaving the flat stick in the bag, as McIlroy proved on the 119-yard 15th.

This was the 35-year-old’s third hole-in-one in professional competition and, undoubtedly, the most unusual of the trio. The “slam dunk” with a wedge into the cup required the greenkeepers to repair the turf around the pin, but by then McIlroy had already celebrated with his playing partner, Ryder Cup team-mate Ludvig Aberg.

Having achieved his first ace as a nine-year-old at his home course of Holywood in Belfast, McIlroy had to wait until his eighth year as a pro, at the 2015 Abu Dhabi Championship, to repeat the trick. His first on the PGA Tour came at the Travelers Championship in 2023 – but there was not another eight-year itch until he completed the hat-trick.

Perhaps McIlroy would have preferred to wait until he teed it up on the revered Pebble Beach course in the second round on the Monterey Peninsula. But the Northern Irishman would not have been moaning, in his first appearance on the United States circuit for five months. He finished his first round six under-par, one behind the early leader, Justin Rose.

Despite the California tournament featuring amateurs accompanying the pros in the first two rounds – McIlroy is accompanying investment banker Jeff Rhodes – the 72-holer is one of the Tour’s $20 million “signature events”. McIlroy arrived in confident more games.