TGL Week 8 Superlatives: Xander’s return, Tiger’s flex and an all-time Hammer backfire

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Welcome to Tomorrow Golf League TODAY. Each week from now until the end of TGL’s inaugural season, we will meet here to recap the physical, virtual and physical-virtual action from the world’s most-hyped professional simulator golf league. But this isn’t any old play-by-play. No, no. That requires too much writing. Instead, we will break down the week’s winners and losers via the most scientific form of analysis known to humanity: Superlatives.

TGL’s inaugural regular season has come and gone … and so have Tiger and Rory. It was a tough week for the league’s founders, who were both eliminated from playoff contention, but from Xander’s return to Dunap’s debut, there’s still plenty to unpack, so let’s get to it.

This Week’s Matches:

Los Angeles Golf Club 5, The Bay Golf Club, 3

New York Golf Club 10, Boston Common Golf 6

Atlanta Drive G.C. 9, Jupiter Links G.C. 1

Best Performance: Xander Schauffele

Let’s be honest: Even if Xander Schauffele had played liked Stevie Wonder swinging an umbrella on Monday, it still would have been good to see him back in action for the first time since The Sentry. Luckily, the reigning PGA and Open champ was far better than that in his return from a nagging rib injury, especially with the putter in his hands. Schauffele’s ruby red Odyssey was as hot as it looked on Monday night, cashing almost half of New York Golf Club’s points. Schauffele got things started with a six-footer for birdie on the 5th after Boston accepted New York’s Hammer, and then repeated that same feat on 12th, rolling in a 11-and-a-half-foot birdie putt. He then chipped in for birdie on the 15th and final hole of the night, sinking the final nail in Boston Common’s gaudy green coffin. Schauffele openly admitted how much he had missed golf, simulated or otherwise, during his absence, and needless to say, we’re looking forward to himing tee it up at Bay Hill this weekend.

Backfire of the Night: Wyndham Clark’s mic Hammer drop

Wyndham Clark rubs some people the wrong way. It wasn’t hard to understand why some fans remain divided on Monday when Clark sauntered up to Tommy Fleetwood’s ball on the 10th hole—which he wasn’t even playing in singles—and dropped the Hammer practically on top of Fleetwood’s lie. It was the kind of thing that would spark a confrontation on the PGA Tour, but in TGL, it was much more ambiguous. In the moment, it seemed fair enough—these guys are encouraged to let their freak flag fly in the SoFi Center, after all—but it backfired spectacularly for The Bay as Min Woo Leed yanked his approach well left into the water hazard. Los Angeles quickly tossed a Hammer of their own, forcing The Bay to concede the hole and two points. That knotted the match at 3-3 and L.A. never looked back, winning two of the remaining four holes to win 5-3. Talking trash is always a risk-reward proposition, but regardless of how you feel about it, Wyndham and The Bay ended up on the wrong side of that equation on Monday.

RELATED: Josh Allen took his bachelor party to meet Tiger Woods at a TGL match

Biggest Burn: New York Golf Club from the top rope

Rory McIlroy and Boston Common Golf knew they needed to get a lot of help in order to make the playoffs entering the final week of the regular season, but they forgot to help themselves. On the first hole of the night, following a ‘Remember the Titans’-esque speech from David Ortiz, Rory McIlroy found himself standing over a five-and-a-half footer for par. That putt would have tied the hole and given Big Green a much-needed boost, but McIlroy watched as his putt, once again, slipped helplessly by. The putt, and result, was eerily reminiscent of the one that McIlroy faced on the 18th green of Pinehurst No. 2 last June, and as it turns out, we weren’t the only ones who noticed …

We sure hope Palm Beach Gardens Medical has an open bed in the burn unit, because Rory just got torched. A lot like Wyndham Clark’s aforementioned Hammer toss, we’re going to score this as narrowly above the belt. You may love it, you may not, but we can’t complain about the sanitized nature of the PGA Tour or ask golf’s top players to show more of their true selves and then get jumpy when something approaches the line. TGL was supposed to open the windows in the PGA Tour’s stuffy boardroom, and so far, it mostly has. Unfortunately for Rory, this time it came at his expense. Next time it will be someone else’s turn and on and on the rotating green will spin.

Much Ado About Nothing: Los Angeles earn TGL’s top seed

The Bay’s capitulation in singles means that Los Angeles Golf Club will enter the playoffs as TGL’s top-overall seed. What does that mean? Well, not much. ESPN made a lot was made of the battle for TGL’s no. 1 seed, but that was mostly lip service. In reality, all it means is that Los Angeles will face New York Golf Club in the semifinals instead of Atlanta Drive G.C. There’s no homefield advantage in TGL, so the advantage for the top seed is negligible. Expansion could change this, possibly offering a first-round bye, but until that point, the playoffs resemble more of a four-team royal rumble than a bracket. That’s fine for now, but the Worldwide Leader should stop trying to sell viewers a prime plot of Florida swampland … even if that is what the SoFi Center is actually built on.

RELATED: The TGL playoffs are set with the one scenario TGL officials hoped to avoid

Early-Dodo-Bird Special: 3 p.m. tee times

3 p.m. tee times are for the high school golf team and people whose bosses are on vacation. Monday proved they shouldn’t be for TGL. ESPN gave the first TGL match of the day the skeleton crew treatment, with sideline reporter Marty Smith—who has had tough time settling in at TGL this season—delivering the team intros in lieu of Roger Steele and color analyst Matt Barrie pulling double duty, taking over Scott Van Pelt’s studio role. Throw in the fact that it was noon on a Monday in the markets The Bay and Los Angeles Golf Club are supposed to cater to, and you have all the makings of a dud. It didn’t affect play as much as the late 9 p.m. tee times seem to, but we’re guessing the same can’t be said for the ratings …

Best Flex: Tiger Woods

We’re not going to sugarcoat it: Tiger Woods looked just as ragged throughout TGL’s opening season as he has in his limited PGA Tour starts of late. There’s plenty of non-golf reasons for that—age, injuries, the loss of his mother—but it was proof that the strain of walking 72 holes is not the only thing holding Woods back from playing competitive golf in the year 2025. That said, he’s the still the GOAT and has earned the right to flex that status like he did on Tuesday, when he delivered one of the lines of the night, telling Atlanta Drive’s Gen-Z fill-in Nick Dunlap, “I had won three majors by the time you were born.” Pretty wild to think about, but Dunlap was born in 2003, so the math checks out.

Youth Movement: Let’s hear it for TGL’s young guns

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Carmen Mandato/TGL

Dunlap’s solid performance on Tuesday night was a reminder that Tomorrow’s Golf League is best suited to tomorrow’s golf stars. Season 1 placed a big emphasis on established names for one obvious reason: the league needed to get people through the door. Unfortunately, TGL’s veteran experiment didn’t work. Tiger Woods and Kevin Kisner were borderline unwatchable when they weren’t nearly decapitating each other with hosel rockets. Keegan Bradley and Adam Scott helped Boston Common to DFL in the standings and Lucas Glover, well, did you remember he was a TGL player before Tuesday night? We sure didn’t.

Meanwhile, young guns like Ludvig Aberg, Tom Kim, Min Woo Lee and Sahith Theegala thrived in the ultra-modern environment. Moving forward, we’d love to see each team carry an up-and-comer in addition to (or perhaps instead of) an aging vet. The 21-year-old Dunlap, who won The American Express as an amateur in 2024, is an obvious choice. As is the latest phenom to earn his Tour card, Luke Clanton, or more established sub-25s like Akshay Bhatia and the Hojgaard twins. We don’t speak for all fans, but next season the SoFi Center be used as a proving ground, not a retirement home.

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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com