GEORGE HIRSCH: We really have taken advantage of the post green renovation time since October 15th. It's kind of a tag line of 31 events in 50 days. But I think what we can really lean on there is we've learned a lot about what we can do in this venue.
Of course if you came to a match, if you watched it on TV, the GreenZone is the star of the show. But what we've found is, for example, this space, right, and other spaces throughout the venue, we can really put on a very customizable experience, whether that is supplementing the field of play, ScreenZone, GreenZone, or candidly, not ever touching it, right. We are an event space that we can do a lot with.
So just throughout some of these past few weeks or past couple of months, we've hosted the CNBC CEO Council, so that was for 150 CEOs. They came in and did a closest to the pin on the field of play, but then we fully transformed that SoFi Center atrium and circle.
You can see that stage there. That is actually right where you walked in, and then we actually turned the building for the Boston Tea Party, which turned into a 1,500-person ticketed event and was our first full sellout event.
Some other examples, we had the Profiles of Leadership that's on your left here. That was a full speaker series. That took place on the field of play. We then turned that into a closest-to-the-pin experience.
Then you'll see on the right, that was actually a VVIP experience for 12 guests. They played holes all the way through, so we called them mini-matches. You can see that bracket on the right wing board. You can come up with team names. There are these three-hole match plays, TGL style, 3-v-3, and it's really the best way to come out and feel like a TGL player. You're starting from the Screen Zone, playing holes all the way through. It's a fun atmosphere.
So just touching on all of that, I think what we've learned is we can really execute more events than maybe what we initially thought when we started to sell private events. We knew people wanted to be on the field of play, and we've executed that very well.
But with all of the spaces around the venue, we can do more than what you just see on TV. We're super excited to continue to execute and learn from future events, but we are really excited for the ability and now to be able to speak to it. Before we had executed, we're like, we think we can do that and we're pretty sure we can do that. Now it's we've done this and we've done that, and the most common conversation we're having nowadays is that one-two punch: Come out and experience a TGL match on a Tuesday night, come get a suite, come get some of the CÎROC Athletic Club tickets and then stay overnight and have your group come and do an experience on the field of play. So that when they're out there, they're like, I saw this putt yesterday, or oh, I made it, they missed it. It is a nice kind of a two-day overnight.
Really just leaning in on it, you can see on the top right, that was for the Palm Beach State College Torch Awards, and they had a whole red carpet experience, really transformed the north concourse. We had a 400-person plated dinner, and we never thought we would be doing that when we started to have these conversations last year.
But really in conclusion, I think the take-home is yes, the field of play is what everybody wants to be a part of, and it can be the star of the show. We have a two-and-a-half-hour closest to the pin experience that's perfect for about 50 guests. Come in, you get what you guys are going to experience this afternoon essentially, and great for a corporate outing.
But then we also have these super unique, super customizable high-end experiences throughout the venue, and this is a fully customizable space. This will look totally different in season with the bars, high-top/low-top seating, but you can really come in and transform this space.
You can see on the bottom right here, that's the gala for 400 people in north concourse. Top left is actually a 145-person seated dinner in this space, and then they flipped it and went to the field of play.
Again, I think the biggest thing is we know what we do well, and we can build packages that are a little bit more turnkey, but if someone comes to us and says, This is my idea, we've always tried to be palms up; let's see what we can do to make that happen.
I don't have as good of an intro for Scott as AG did for me, but he does everything for competition and he's the man.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: Hi, Scott Armstrong. I oversee the competition department here for TMRW Sports and TGL, and I wanted to show you -- you got to see it, the new GreenZone, but that's kind of our biggest thing we did in the off-season.
As AG said, we shut down mid-August and we took a couple months to remove the entire field of play basically. All the turf is new, and then the whole GreenZone, the turntable was leveled down to zero and rebuilt up from scratch.
The reason we did it -- nothing was wrong with it. The goal all along was to create an entertainment product, and it did in season 1, especially with that Billy Horschel putt. But even going back, lots of drama on the green. That's where most of it happens in TGL. Checkmark for succeeding in that.
But if you know us and have been around, you know we don't take ourselves too seriously and we're going to be open for change if needed, and we just felt we wanted to get the feedback from the players, from fans, media, everybody, and see how if there was a way to improve it then what should we do.
One big thing we wanted to do was could we make the green bigger. As it stood last year, it was 3,800 square feet, which is small. The TPC Sawgrass, the island green is 3,900 square feet, so every hole was playing into that same size and shape. So challenging for longer par-5s or longer par-4s, so a lot of the times you'd see shots end up, really good shots end up just off the green. They might only be about 15 feet or 10 feet away from the hole, but they were finishing on the fringe. That gave a little perception that it wasn't a great shot, but it might be a shot that was 15 feet away with a 3-iron, which would be an amazing shot in golf.
The goal was can we make it bigger, and we did, as you saw. We went from 3,800 square feet to over 5,200 square feet, so 5,200 is around getting closer to the average PGA TOUR green.
We wanted to keep the same shape. The kidney-shaped green, the top tier that's up there, we felt those were parts of our game that we liked and we wanted to continue on in season 2, so we just made it bigger. The top tier is larger, so the top tier is about 60 percent larger surface area, so we can play longer shots into it.
Before we would normally just play that top tier when we knew the player was going to have a short iron in their hand, and now it's opened it up. That hole, the whole green is 38 percent larger, and that top tier is 60 percent larger.
We also made, you can see this bunker here - I'll point to it - that bunker was removed, and that gave us the space now to make the green bigger and everything bigger. So the other two bunkers we were able to make larger, a little flatter, so have more even lies for the players.
The other things we did was we took the green can change undulation underneath, so we took that idea and we went from three different virtual greens to two and we made those two larger. So the two that sit on the green are 25-by-25-foot squares now. Still 608 actuators underneath there that can change the undulation. So every hole the turntable will still rotate, and the green will change undulation in those two sections.
We added hole locations, so we have 12 hole locations this year instead of seven last year, so it really opens us up for me and my team to do course setup. We set up the course and we pick the hole locations for every hole, for every match. So having 12 hole locations and the options of back hole locations with a softer green now, or softer tiers, we can use pretty much every hole location for every hole now.
One thing I didn't mention is everything is softer, so that top knoll that's back behind the top tier, that was dropped 18 inches lower this year. Really helps viewing. If you're sitting front row now and that turntable is turned where you're looking directly at the top tier, you can be sitting and still see all 12 hole locations where last year you would have to stand and you still might not be able to see all the hole locations. That was huge for the in-venue fan experience.
What else did I not hit on? Let's see. Yeah, just overall softer slopes. So the top tier down to the bottom tier last year in one section was about 40 percent slope, so the highest kind of greatest slow now is about 22 percent, so everything is just about half as soft.
It's still challenging. If you go out there and putt today, it's not easy by any means. It's not easy. But probably a little more fair if you're putting from one side of the green to the other and have to deal with that top tier. So that's the GreenZone, and you'll get to see it and play on it out there.
The other thing we did is we enhanced our game graphics. We are upgraded to HDRP. HDRP is basically just high-fidelity materials, advanced lighting, so every hole was rebuilt. This is just one slide, but every hole is going to look basically you can do this with a one-two example to show just brighter, clearer, more realistic, photo realistic.
On TV, we've already been watching some test matches and it's just night and day, the quality of the graphics.
Then holes. We have new holes. The first thing you would have seen last week, LA announced their new team hole, which is called "Showtime," so what we did is we took six par-5s that were played last year, and we gave each team one of those par-5s and then said you can do anything you want with this hole. Make it your own; put it in your setting. We worked with each of the six teams.
This is LA's hole, so this hole was actually called "Hang Loose" last year, and we transplanted it into this kind of ocean setting that's got some really cool Easter eggs all over on the right side. There's some buildings with graffiti on them and it's kind of a story board as you go along. You've got the Los Angeles sign that looks like the Hollywood sign. As I move forward you can probably see in the background there's the Santa Monica pier with the Ferris wheel.
They did a great job with this. Every team got their chance to do this.
Those will start to be released more this week. I can't remember the order of the holes being released, but I think two or three teams are releasing their team hole this week.
Then we've got a new hole designer, Gil Hanse, which is a huge get for us. Probably the No. 1 name in golf hole design, most sought-after designer to be doing new builds or redesigns.
This is his first hole. He's going to eventually do five holes for us. We'll have this one for match one ready, and then we're going to keep developing his other holes and be releasing them throughout the season.
So this hole was "Stone & Steeple" we named it. It's got a cool church there on the left. There's a graveyard on the left with a stone wall running all up along the left side of the hole.
He definitely went more to his roots and kind of traditional, and he really prides himself on history and knowing all the golf course designers that came before him, and so a lot of his holes are odes to those designers, but he did step out of the box on one that will be a cool release when we get to it.
You might have seen this. This was our new hole that we released last week called "Stinger." This is an Augie Pizá hole. This is kind of a preview of what's to come on our new holes. The "Stone & Steeple," you probably didn't see it, but it promotes players to play shots, play not just kind of target golf but to shape shots. This hole is the ultimate shape shotter, so you have to hit it below a big rock structure that's 50 feet high at its highest point on the right, so you have to hit the shot called the stinger off the tee.
Our holes that you'll see us release throughout the season will be on par with this where we're making players shape it left to right, go under things, over things, try to promote that kind of -- these guys are the best at their craft, and to be able to show that off in a little different ways was what we're trying to do.
(Periods of disrupted audio due to cross-talk on Zoom).
Lowest launch angle they can hit, which we record when they hit the shot. I think the record is Sahith Theegala might have got a .6 launch angle, so the thing is just going dead straight.
As I mentioned before, now we have four different hole designers, so Beau Welling Design, Gil Hanse is new, Nicklaus Design and Pizá Golf, so we'll be launching more holes throughout the season as they come available to us.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Scott. Appreciate you. He'll show the new green as we get out on the field of play, and any questions about competition, holes. Just keep an eye out for the Jupiter Links golf hole, which is, I believe, coming this week. There might be a lighthouse in it, but I don't want to break any news, but it's a good-looking hole.
All right, I think we're ready to welcome Tom Kim, speaking of Jupiter Links GC. There's his dashboard. Let's see if we can see Tom. Just to show you guys how dedicated our players are, Tom is straight from the doctor's office and still ready to join us. The youngest player ever to hit a shot in TGL history, three-time winner on the PGA TOUR, key member of the Presidents Cup team, and of course, a key member of Jupiter Links Golf Club.
Before I hand it over to the media here, I'll throw out the first question. Tom, what did you enjoy most about TGL in your first season?
TOM KIM: The biggest aspect to me was definitely the team aspect. I think golf is such an individual sport, and for that small time we were able to become a team and strategize.
Playing for more than yourself is something that has always been big for me. It's so cool for me, especially just our team is so much fun and such a good group of guys.
Q. You guys last year, so many of you talked about the balancing the competition with fun, and we saw a lot of both. At the end, we saw the ultimate competition in the final match. Do you look at that kind of the same way coming in? Did you learn one about the other, that you might be able to have more fun than you thought or this is more competitive than we thought?
TOM KIM: It's definitely more competitive. When I first walked into it, I just told myself, it's going to be very relaxed, and we're all going to have a good time. But it's really weird, I think as competitors, when you walk into that arena and you see the opposite team, you want to beat them so bad. It doesn't help when our captain is the greatest of all time and he's pushing us to try to win.
Obviously I'm sure you guys can see it, but I'm way more competitive than I tend to be. I try to be relaxed out there, but it just comes out, and I want to win so badly. Definitely the competitive side comes out.
Q. I'm curious, what would you like from the crowd? I know sometimes people come to TGL and they know it's supposed to be a more raucous environment but then they see you guys and it looks and feels serious. They can tell the competition is pouring out and it might be more nervous to yell or give that energy. Do you appreciate the difference in TGL where crowd members and patrons are able to yell and scream and cheer? Would you like more of that or do you want less of that to concentrate? How do you feel out there on the green?
TOM KIM: No, I think it's great. I think the fans need to be more involved, to be honest. They were great last year. To be able to be that close, I think, with fans is also very special, when you can hear them that well. When we play normal tournament golf, it's very quiet and you're very locked in, but at least this one event for two and a half hours you're able to -- it's fun. If I was a fan, I would have so much fun yelling at players. It's so enjoyable. I'd like the fans to actually be more included and help them be a little bit more rowdy.
Q. Obviously there are some changes with the greens and the holes for this upcoming season. Were there any takeaways after a year of playing this that you wanted to have into the next season?
TOM KIM: No, actually. I was able to see the stadium and see the changes, and they've done such a great job with it, actually. They made it, I would say, a little bit more birdieable for us, which I don't think they needed to do. But at the same time, you want to see birdies to be able to win.
I think they've done such a great job. What's weird, they did not change the grass or anything, but it's way more consistency now for some reason. So as a player, it's a little easier to putt because it is difficult to putt on them. I've had some success, but they're difficult to read, and they've definitely helped us out with that just to make a few more birdies.
Q. Tom, you mentioned your team captain. What's it going to be like to start the year without Tiger, and when do you expect him to be back playing? He mentioned he's been chipping and putting, but he said he'd potentially miss the start of the year.
TOM KIM: That's going to be more work for us, but we're going to need to step up. That's the big thing. We're not going to put pressure on a certain guy not playing. It's just going to be whether he plays or not, I think we're all going to be ready, and we're just going to try to perform the best we can.
Q. What has been your "wow" moment so far here at TGL?
TOM KIM: Ooh, that's a great question.
Q. Thank you.
TOM KIM: Probably for me, just to be able to see the different personalities of all the players because I've played Presidents Cup before, but I haven't seen the European guys play in a team environment. To be able to see all types of different personalities come to life, that's been, like, the biggest awe for me.
Q. You talked about the competition. Was there a definite disappointment in not making -- in finishing where you guys finished, not making the playoffs? Did Tiger say anything about it? Did you get together and say, we don't want this to happen again?
TOM KIM: Well, I don't think anyone wants to lose. I don't think it was a conversation that needed to happen. We were in a funky spot. We had a lot of things go on kind of during the year, and obviously we didn't have the success that we wanted to.
But I think next year we're really just motivated to do well because we kind of have our foot set and we know how it goes around, and we're more experienced with the whole thing.
I think next year is going to be exciting for us. I think all of us are kind of ready to not suck anymore. We're ready to win, especially a guy who's not used to losing as much. I think he's definitely on our butts to kind of get into the playoffs and have a chance to win.
Q. Going back to when you were younger, did you ever think you'd be on a team with Tiger Woods?
TOM KIM: Absolutely not. That's one of the craziest things. We've won one match together, and I felt like that was probably the best I've ever seen Tiger play. That was a very cool thing for me, and hopefully he's able to come back and be healthy. I think it's great for our sport, great for our team. We love having him there.
When he doesn't play, he's always active on the group chat. He's always giving us a pump-up speech or a pump-up fist pump when we make a putt.
I think we're all really ready to go, and Tiger is always our -- I would say when he's not playing, he's our biggest fan.
Q. When you start training for a TGL match and you're out here in the simulators, what is the difference between a simulator warmup and then an on-the-range warmup when you're outdoors?
TOM KIM: I try to treat it the same. I'm really as intentional as I am when I'm outside. I really try to understand the bounce on the greens, the chip shots, and especially the yardage on the screen because you really have to tap into a different mindset of you're not seeing the ball land, you're only seeing it take off, and you have to be able to feel as soon as you hit it what the ball flight is going to produce. So it's almost an immediate reaction that you have to bring. That's kind of what I really try to be aware of.
Obviously it's a little different process, but the intention is the same and the intensity is the same. So I really try to not really change much. I just try to be more aware of what's in front of me.
Q. What are some of the questions you've received from other golfers not involved with TGL about just being a part of this brand, the product, the experience? What have been some of the questions you've received?
TOM KIM: You know, as golfers, everyone asks how different it is, and fans, they've asked do I enjoy it as much as it seems and is it more enjoyable when you're there. I've said yes, it's way more intense than people think. I think a lot of people just think we're having fun because they can hear us talk. We're actually really trying to beat each other, and it's way more competitive.
So that's been the difference between the two. But I would say when a fan asks, I think they're always more surprised when they see us being more intense, and we enjoy it much more than they anticipate.
Q. First off-season, first free agency cycle, if you would, for TGL, what was that process like? As they told us earlier here, everyone asked to come back. When were you asked about that? When were you given the option? How did that work?
TOM KIM: To be honest, I don't really know. I wasn't going to leave my team, so it didn't really come into my mind of what free agency was going to be like. I didn't have any complaints. I was on Tiger's team, and he makes things really easy for us.
Before the season started, I kind of wanted to be back for season 2.
Q. These guys are about to go have a little closest to the pin out on the screen. Any advice for those that are going out there and hitting a ball into the screen?
TOM KIM: I think only one person has missed the screen so far, so don't miss the screen. Don't break anything because we're going to need to tee it up in a few weeks. So that would be very helpful.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you so much. Good luck to you and Jupiter Links Golf Club. Thanks for taking the time to call in from the doc's office. Get some penicillin, and we'll see you here in January.
I'm just going to bring either George or Scott back up to tell you guys what's next as far as the closest to the pin. Again, all of us are available for interviews. Lucas Glover will be joining us out on the course. Thanks again for coming.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports