Rory McIlroy’s decision means he won’t see Amanda Balionis while he’s with his wife

Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods’ innovative golf league, TGL, will officially launch in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, in early 2025 after the original launch date was postponed

Rory McIlroy will no doubt want to show that his and Tiger Woods’ innovative golf league, TGL, is different from rival LIV Golf.

McIlroy and Woods formed TGL in 2022 in response to the birth of the LIV structure. The simulation-based league was set to launch in early 2024, but numerous issues with the league’s Florida location have caused the inaugural season to be postponed until 2025.

The state-of-the-art stadium indoor course will host a six-team PGA Tour event with McIlroy and Woods leading their own four-man lineup. The team element of this league has sometimes been compared to LIV, which prides itself on team competition alongside individual rankings. Additionally, McIlroy and Woods’ efforts to innovate the game in a league never before seen seemed to align with LIV’s plans again. But McIlroy was quick to deny that, and when asked about comparisons between the two leagues following the launch of Boston Common in Northern Ireland last November, he pointed out that the TGL’s plan was not to “disrupt” the PGA Tour but to work in sync with it. “I think we should add that, it should never be an infraction,” McIlroy said. “So whenever Mike McCarley pitched this idea to Tiger and me, I think the first thing we said was, ‘If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to make an effort to partner with the PGA Tour in some areas.’ By all means, try to make it complementary.”

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“So I think that was the first time. It wasn’t hostility at all. He was trying to ask: “How can I contribute to the system as a whole? » It’s a different type of golf, but it’s not the traditional golf that you see every week.

“So, I’m not going to sit here and talk about LIV, but I think you can make the argument that they haven’t innovated enough from the way traditional golf is. Or maybe there was so much innovation that it was no longer traditional golf. It was like we were in no man’s land. [TGL] is a far cry from what we know about golf.

Despite a delayed launch in January, McIlroy and Woods’ project got a major boost earlier this week when it was revealed that TGL’s parent company, TMRW Sports, was valued at just under 400 million pounds ($500 million), according to Bloomberg. A host of big names have invested in the company, including Fenway Sports Group, Lewis Hamilton, Gareth Bale and even Justin Bieber. In addition to McIlroy and Woods, the TGL has an impressive lineup of players, including Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa on the 24-man roster. The duo left Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton to join Team LIV, but Hideki Matsuyama finally completed the TGL roster last week. Rory McIlroy’s decision means he won’t see Amanda Balionis while he’s with his wife