Is golf cool now?

Golf has been around for centuries, but it’s massively contributing to — and suffering from — the ongoing climate crisis.

Now, there may be a way to keep golf alive and make it more fun than it has been for all these centuries.

PGA meets WWE

TGL is a new indoor golf league hosted at Florida’s SoFi Center, where professional players (including co-founder Tiger Woods) hit golf balls at a ~3.4k-square-foot screen, per The Verge.

• TGL is the next evolution of indoor golf, pairing its simulated play with the overblown theatrics of professional wrestling.
• Courses are 15 holes, scoring is simpler, golfers have a shot clock, and they’re all mic’d, so you can hear them talk trash.
• The green is a physical space transformed into different layouts by tiny actuators.

It’s a more efficient and entertaining version of the classic “good walk spoiled.” You don’t even need to walk!

Purists might argue that this isn’t real golf, but the TGL team doesn’t care.

• The many high-tech sensors tracking a ball’s trajectory can get things wrong (and have).
• But the point is to make an entertaining show, not to faithfully recreate golf.

And it seems to be working, because TGL’s ratings on ESPN are apparently pretty good (though, to be fair, matches happen on Mondays and Tuesdays when there’s not much sports competition).

Golf makes the most sense…

… to infuse with some fun tech, since it has that nightmarish environmental impact and is (arguably) just so boring — but generally speaking, digitally enhanced sports are definitely the future.

• Fans already fill arenas to watch esports, and several companies are making super game-y simulators for other sports.

At a certain point, why spend money on a soccer stadium when you can use tech to make an easier, more fun version of the real thing?