On the first hole of the second match in TGL’s history, Kevin Kisner had a simple wedge shot from the fairway.

Kisner 116 yards away. Last season on the PGA Tour, his average leave was 18 feet. Here, his shot slipped off the green. T

Collin Morikawa made the same mistake on the next shot, but worse. 108 yards away from the fairway grass, Morikawa pumped his wedge 119 yards. His next wedge one came on the 14th hole. From 135 yards, he wedged it into the lip of a virtual bunker.

“I flushed it,” he said afterwards.

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On the second hole, Tiger Woods had a paltry 101 yards. His subsequent wedge shot flew 131, directly into a hazard. Tiger looked at the green, in shock.

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Charlie Woods in the ground found the mistake rather hilarious.

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Sahith Theegala hit the best wedge shot of the lot, hitting his 128-yard shot five yards long on the ninth hole. Kisner hit his second wedge shot of the night on the same hole, and from 106, dunked it into a bunker 96 yards away.

If you’re keeping score, that’s six wedge shots, an average of just 115 yards. Of those…

  • Only one shot hit the green.
  • The best leave was a hair better than tour average.
  • The average leave was more than double the tour average.
  • Put those results together, and that performance would’ve ranked last of all 184 players on tour—by a significant margin.

So… WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

https://www.golfdigest.com/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2022/Screenshot 2025-01-14 at 7.31.02 PM.png First, some math

For all those not familiar with golf’s rules who may be reading, and even those who are:

Golfers are allowed to carry 14 clubs. Four of those clubs generally have very specific purposes:

  • The driver’s job is to go as far as possible
  • The 3-wood’s job is to go far, but also a little shorter and straighter than the driver
  • A sand wedge is exclusively for chipping around the greens
  • A putter is for putting on the greens

That leaves 10 clubs for all the other shots. Pros generally try to spread eight of those 10 clubs out in even gaps, between about 250 yards and about 130 yards. The other two clubs are for everything between 130 yards and chipping distance.

From longer range, players will try to keep their swing the same but switch their clubs to hit their ball the distance they want. But from shorter range, players rely on just one or two clubs, and instead change their swing to hit the ball their desired distance, usually by eyeballing it and shortening their backswing accordingly.

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And they’re fine with that. There’s more margin for error from shorter range. So feeling it works.

But then, enter TGL…

A brain-breaking layout

The TGL screen is a whopping 64 feet tall and 53 feet wide. On shots from inside 160 yards (like all these wedge shots), players move up to the tee some 20 yards away.

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This layout basically breaks players’ brains. They don’t have a visual gauge of the distance they’re trying to hit on shots where they rely almost solely on getting a visual gauge for the shot. Hitting into a screen simply robs them of their ability to react to the target and rely on their feel.

As one current TGL player told me:

“You’re hitting into a giant screen from way up close. It messes with your depth perception. Tons of guys in practice were airmailing wedges over the green. It’s different. Definitely an adjustment.”

It’s not a bad thing—it’s actually quite entertaining for fans at home, adding such a layer of unpredictability—but for players, it feels entirely new. So until they get some more reps in under the lights and into the big screen, expect the unexpected.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com