Tiger Woods becomes first TGL star to be hit with penalty for breaking the rules
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Of all the people for this to happen to, anyone but Tiger Woods…
There’s a classic Viz Comic letter which starts with the writer bemoaning sports commentators using phrases such as “you couldn’t write a script like this”.
“If people can write scripts about dystopian futures in which life is in fact a simulation made by sentient machines to harness humans’ heat and electricity as an energy source, they can probably write ones about Gary Taylor-Fletcher scoring a last-minute equaliser against Stoke.”
Not many, though, could have even dreamed up the kinds of things Tiger Woods has done throughout his career.
And even fewer would have dared to write one that involved him being hit with a slow play penalty. During a match in TGL. Of which he is a co-founder. Against his business partner.
But that’s exactly what happened on Monday night in Palm Beach Gardens’ SoFi Center.
Woods’ Jupiter Links team were up against Rory McIlroy’s Boston Common in the most-anticipated showdown of the simulator leagues schedule.
The teams arrived on the 10th hole tied 1-1, with the superstar pair going head-to-head in the first singles match.
But with both on the green and weighing up birdie putts, Woods stood over his eight-and-a-half footer as the big red numbers ticked down. The buzzer sounded a split second before he pulled the trigger and the shot clock violation handed the 15-time major champion his own little slice of unwanted history.
The crowd erupted as a clearly furious Woods scooped up his Bridgestone having handed the hole – and the point – to his Beantown rivals.
It would all end well for Woods and his Jupiter teammates, though, who won 4-3 thanks to a closest-to-the-pin chip-off.
If anyone was writing the script for the evening, they may have got away with it. For Woods, it’s just part of the TGL experience.
“It is so different to normal golf,” Woods said after helping Jupiter Links to their first win of the season having been stuffed 12-1 last week. “This is what we had envisioned for TGL, to have an experience like this, and I think we delivered.
“It couldn’t have been a more pleasurable display of golf and banter. Everyone in the audience was engaged. Hopefully all the viewership were engaged. We as players loved it.”
McIlroy, meanwhile, was more gushing of his opponent, hero, friend, and now business partner.
“I’ve shared the course with him many times,” he explained, “and I’ve been in a couple of final groups with him, and he has just as much intensity out there tonight as he does when he’s trying to win a major championship or trying to finish off a golf tournament. He was feeling it out there, and it was really cool to see.”
Well, you can’t spell ‘hyperbole’ without ‘Rory’.
He added: “It’s been really cool to hear that a younger demographic [and how TGL has] resonated with them. One of the visions when we started was to try to engage that younger demographic and give them a bite-sized version of golf that they could get into and understand, and hopefully we’ve done that.”
For McIlroy, it’s now a trip to the west coast for the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, while Woods is yet to commit to any tournaments as he struggles to regain full fitness since his latest bout of surgery.
About the author
Alex has been in the golf industry since 2007 and has helped shape a number of publications in that time. He joined Today’s Golfer in January 2025 to lead the brand’s news division.
He is a keen golfer who claims to play off 12 and enjoys traveling the world to try new courses. His three favorites are Royal North Devon, the Old Course at St Andrews, and Royal Portrush – with special mentions for Okehampton and Bude & North Cornwall, where he first fell in love with the game.
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Tiger Woods was hit by a shot clock violation at TGL
