What does TGL stand for? Investigation (with a surprising twist)

Earlier this week, as I was trying to explain the implementation of the another one new golf league to a non-golfer friend, asked a reasonable question: What does TGL stand for?

He didn’t mean it represents existing, such as what does TGL stand for, who does it fight for, what are its principles. What did you mean, exactly, do the letters of the acronym TGL stand for? The NBA is the National Basketball Association. The NFL is the National Football League. MLB is Major League Baseball. What is TGL?

And I realized I didn’t have an answer. IG and L, I can safely assume, refer to “Golf League.” But how is T?

I thought back to when we first heard about this new thing in golf, at the press conference at the 2022 Tour Championship. It was LIV’s first summer, a tumultuous time for the PGA Tour and professional golf, but Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods had led the charge to stabilize the Tour and now, with added incentive, they were launching a new company and golf look. the league. At East Lake, McIlroy brought up CEO and co-founder Mike McCarley to officially launch two new entities: TMRW Sports (the company) and TGL (the league). I remember the uncertainty at the time: What in the world are these? But I didn’t remember much.

Did McCarley explain them then? I pulled out the transcript to see if he had delved into the acronyms, but no dice – he was deliberately and understandably vague. Forget TGL; it was not clear exactly what TMRW was. Indeed, it was the initials of Tiger Woods (TW) and Rory McIlroy (RM) put together. After a while we heard that it was called “tomorrow.” But the rest we will have to put together ourselves.

There were many opportunities. McCarley always called it a “technologically installed” golf league. It was like that that the T in TGL? I hope not. Does the T refer to the more popular T of golf and were we seeing the launch of the Tiger Golf League or Tiger’s Golf League or something along those lines? That would be a bit on the nose. The most logical explanation is that it was the TMRW Golf League, shortening one obscure acronym to condense it into another. But that would require many layers of explanation and, if it was, I haven’t seen it written anywhere.

I took out the TGL website. Any definition was clearly absent and the league was defined by its three letters only. Actually, that is not true. On its site and in all press releases you will find “TGL presented by SoFi” which appears to be the official name. An easy dig at league expenses would be to, in old golf fashion, find a sponsor before they check out the league. But week 1! We’re feeling warm and fuzzy about their golf innovation — no cheap shots required.

Surely Google would know. Another person could ask a question and get an answer. And they were— type. Many outlets have mentioned it, but I have seen many references to TGL as “The Golf League of Tomorrow.” I New York Times that’s how he explained it. So did ESPN, who added that the inclusion of “Tomorrow” in the name “is from” TMRW. Even Wikipedia has added a reference to “Tomorrow”. I get a picture of tomorrow, which lends a forward-looking league focused on the beginning something new and different. But to call it tomorrow’s league forever? That presents the Dippin’ Dots problem. If you are the ice cream of tomorrow – or, in this case, the golf league of tomorrow – what if you want to be a golf league today?

USA Today presented another exception to its description, writing that TGL “unofficially” stands for the Tomorrow Golf League. That felt better. I’ve been on the receiving end of enough TGL media that I think I would have seen the “For Tomorrow” reference if it had been made official, but no.

I finally got an interview with McCarley on The Palm Beach Post when he faced the question directly and stated the truth.

“You go through a lot of testing with different brands and agencies and eventually you find that when you do a sports league, everybody uses an acronym,” McCarley said. “So start with an abbreviation because that’s the way it will end up being called when people start to see what it is and how to say it.”

In other words, McCarley and co. they were stable in TGL before they were stable in T. He pondered the same questions as us. Tiger The Golf League? Technology golf league? Simply put I The Golf League? In the end he probably decided it didn’t matter that much. You’re probably right that the full name doesn’t mean anything; only long-winded broadcasters ever refer to the “National Football League,” after all. Still, it helps define the league. There is something fundamental about its existence. But when I finally contacted a league employee, that person confirmed an unpleasant truth: TGL just stands for TGL.

I didn’t like that. Acronyms are abbreviations of meaning, and it is not natural to skip the step of having something to abbreviate. Another league would never do thisI thought to myself. Then I realized, wait a minute – what if the PGA Tour already does?

You may or may not know that the current Tour was once part of the Professional Golfers’ Association of America. This is where the “PGA” began. But somewhere after the split, things turned sour. Another sign of this corruption: In 1981 the league even changed its name to the Tournament Players Association, known as the TPA Tour, to avoid confusion, but then changed it after a few months. Maybe that’s where the acronym got lost in the fill, I’m not sure – but I’ve confirmed with many Tour staff that, as far as they know, the PGA Tour isn’t currently short on anything. That’s the perfect thing.

For the first time in years, a scene from the epic 2004 high school student film popped into my head. Total Score, my family had it on DVD and thus cycled several times on road trips. At one point in the movie Kyle (played by Chris Evans) asks Matty (Bryan Greenberg) what he thinks the SAT stands for.

“[It used to be] School Aptitude Test,” said Kyle. “Then they completely eliminated that. Do you know what it stands for now?”

“Hmph.“

“The SAT.“

“What?“

“The SAT stands for the SAT. That’s all.”

“That’s f—- up!”

For the record, that’s true: the SAT doesn’t stand for anything anymore. It’s just the SAT, full stop. But we already know, for better or worse, what the SAT is. With TGL, we begin to find out.

And once we do, the name won’t matter, anyway.

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