The tactical reason why Tiger Woods ISN’T playing in the first TGL match

After many months of waiting, Tiger Woods’ golf league has a week 1 schedule.

The strange part?

Tiger Woods isn’t on it.

Huh?

Yes, when the action begins in the brand-new TGL from the brand-new SoFi Center in West Palm Beach in January, it will feature a matchup between neither of the league’s biggest stars: New York Golf Club (Xander Schauffele, Cam Young, Matt Fitzpatrick and Rickie Fowler) and The Bay Golf Club (Ludvig Aberg, Wyndham Clark, Min Woo Lee and Shane Lowry). Woods and Rory McIlroy won’t play in week one, which will air on ESPN at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, January 7, a move which means the novel simulator-heavy golf league will introduce itself to the world with a roster populated by enjoyable, but probably not particularly ratings-driving players.

Oh, don’t worry we forgive you for being so confused. Had not the formation of this new league been about getting Tiger Woods on television even more than he is now in his new amateur like role? Could the league not understand the fact that there is virtually no time to waste while the watching world moves from game to game? Was it unaware of the fact that Tiger Woods was important to sustain the league audience in the long-run or, better yet, did it simply not bother to care?

As it turns out, the answer is much more sensible than it seems.

While the league still has every hope of delivering a high-entertainment, big-audience week 1 telecast, the TGL placed Woods’ first competitive appearance in week 2 for a very tactical reason: The NFL.

The TGL’s week 2 broadcast — which will feature Woods’ Jupiter Links GC against Collin Morikawa’s LAGC — has the benefit of a rare gift in sports television: NFL promotion. The telecast will air on Tuesday, January 14 at 7 p.m. on ESPN, exactly one day after the NFL’s final wild card weekend game airs on the same network and in the same timeslot.

Of course, a 7 p.m. Tuesday spot isn’t the ideal time to slot a game during a packed time of year for sports, but it is a prime time TV window during the week when many sports fans will be readying themselves for their setees. What’s more: gives the TGL what figures to be a full evening of Tiger promotion to one of the largest television audiences of the sports year, the broadcast airing a day after the NFL.

In other words the Tiger decision seeks to give the league’s most prominent figure at the time the TV audience is at its largest. Indeed, from the business and competitive perspective, that proof makes much of sense. More importantly, though, it shows the TGL understands the biggest obstacle facing the league in year 1: helping it turn its first audiences into enthusiasts.

There are other, equally large TV challenges for the TGL’s first season. As with building the sentiment of viewership during a schedule that swaps days, networks and timeslots; building loyalty from teams who will never play in front of their respective cities; and producing a high-entertainment reading of the electronic NFL soap opera to a crowd of no more than 1,500. But these challenges all speak to a common throughline that Tiger’s week 2 debut attempts to address: meaning for a sports league TV viewership is equivalent to money.

Luckily for Tiger Woods the TV viewership is assured for him anyway. At least that is what the television viewership of Golf TV in the last twenty-five years informed us. As much as there may be no historic precedence for this, the hope here is that it will be the same with a new pro golf product in 2025.

Once in a while, that’s exactly what Tiger finishes – a place behind the number one team. However, with the TGL, that might not be such a bad thing For the TGL we are aware of the challenges that may be awaiting us a head of time.