Earlier this week, TGL held its fifth match of the season.
It wasn’t a particularly close match between victorious Los Angeles Golf Club and Boston Common—blowouts have been the norm so far in TGL’s turbulent inaugural season—but the real headline is what happened to Tommy Fleetwood.
Fleetwood, of LAGC, stepped up on the second hole Tuesday night to hit an iron shot from 168 yards out. He flushed it, as Tour pros typically do. Fleetwood is one of the best iron players in the game, so you would expect a good result.
Imagine everyone’s surprise when the simulator only registered it as a 39-yard shot.
“What just happened?” Rory McIlroy, playing on Boston Common, said.
ESPN commentators played it off like nothing happened, similarly to how they blamed “adrenaline” for previous misreadings in other TGL matches.
Fleetwood was granted a mulligan, and he hit that shot in the greenside bunker. LAGC won the hole to go up, 2-0, and would eventually pull away from McIlroy’s squad by a 6-2 margin.
The error didn’t affect the ultimate outcome, but the bigger story is TGL’s continued tech issues. As MyGolfSpy has profiled, TGL is using 16 radar-based Full Swing Kits to capture shot data. Full Swing is the launch monitor of choice based on TGL co-owner Tiger Woods who has a stake in Full Swing.
There have been some sketchy readings throughout the first five weeks of play. In one instance, Woods flew a green by 30 yards despite only being faced with a 100-yard wedge shot. In another Collin Morikawa airmailed a green from just 105 yards out.
Players have been heard criticizing the simulator. Tom Kim said, “I don’t think this thing (the simulator) knows what a fade is.”
Ouch. There is a lot of money behind TGL. They have an ESPN primetime slot and some of the most recognizable golfers on the planet. Occasionally, the 15-hole matches have been entertaining (though not often enough). I thought the fourth match between Tiger and Rory was awesome viewing and a step forward.
However, what TGL doesn’t have is an accurate simulator that can be trusted. That technology exists with camera-based simulators that are far more trustworthy than Full Swing for this type of endeavor—but TGL is not using Trackman or Foresight.
How could anyone gamble on this with any confidence? Betting was one of the ways that TGL could become successful.
Now we are seeing TGL’s TV ratings slip as barely 500,000 watched the fifth match. While it likely has a high floor because of ESPN and Tiger, the ceiling also seems to be lower than some might have hoped for.
Regardless of how you slice it, this Fleetwood mishap was an embarrassing moment.
Top Photo Caption: Tommy Fleetwood laughed it off after the simulator misread his shot. (GETTY IMAGES/Megan Briggs)
Deon du Plessis
1 month ago
There is an easy solution for this. Use 3 LM’s and aggregate the data. If one LM’s readings is completely off from the other’s throw it away. If the readings are in an acceptable range, aggregate the readings and use that in the SIM. Really not that difficult. And you don’t need a super computer to do it. You are literally aggregating 3 values. Would be almost instant.
Dok
1 month ago
Kind of like the precogs in the Minority Report.