When famed golf architect A.W. Tillinghast was designing courses in the early 1900s, he surely never imagined his work would one day inspire holes that would virtually appear on a 53-feet-tall high-tech screen more than 100 years later.
But Tillinghast—who has designed major championship venues like Winged Foot and Bethpage Black—is the first person Gil Hanse gives credit to for his new designs appearing in Season 2 of TGL, the indoor team golf league cofounded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
Hanse is one of the most well-known golf architects of modern times, responsible for new builds like the 2016 Olympic Golf Course in Brazil, and even more so for restoration projects at major championship courses, like the aforementioned Tillinghast-designed Winged Foot.
“I know our reputation is much more traditional-based, and we do a lot of the restoration stuff at these great places. It was a little bit outside the box, and I embraced that,” Hanse, who heads up Hanse Golf Course Design, tells Front Office Sports. “I thought it was really fun.”
Stone & Steeple, the name of one of five holes Hanse has created for TGL, was the first to debut during Sunday’s season-opener, which saw 2025 champions Atlanta Drive Golf Club defeat New York Golf Club. The par-5 incorporates the “Sahara” design feature with cross bunkers separating the first and second halves of the hole.
“It took a while to get this right,” Hanse says of his work at TGL. “And I was also a little bit surprised at the level of detail required for these golf holes.” Some work is still being done on at least one hole that originated in June, he says.
The 62-year-old Hanse doesn’t consider himself very tech-savvy. “It’s an interesting process,” he says. “I had no idea. I am the most analog guy in the world. I do not have any digital capabilities.” So, he was happy to rely on support staff from his firm and TGL as he made his maiden voyage in virtual design.
“I was struck by how similar that process was in the digital world,” Hanse says. “Obviously it’s shaping and modeling terrain and real dirt versus shaping and modeling a digital image, but that was a similarity. From a difference standpoint, a lot of times we try to find golf holes and allow Mother Nature to create them more than us. This was just a blank slate.”
The infinite options for TGL holes put one’s time management skills to the test, too. “It was honestly quicker to design a real hole, I think, because the process of this—they’re so meticulous,” Hanse says, noting separate additional construction time would be needed for green grass courses.
More Hanse-designed holes will be debuting throughout the TGL season, alongside other TGL holes created by Pizá Golf, Beau Welling Design, and Nicklaus Design.
Bringing on Hanse was one of many additions and changes TGL is implementing as the league looks to continue growing. TGL renovated the short game area at the 1,500-seat SoFi Center in South Florida, where all matches are played, and this season, each TGL team has one official team hole that will be used for each 15-hole match they compete in. That will expand to multiple holes in future seasons, TGL confirmed to FOS.
TGL’s season-opener was the league’s first appearance on ABC, after matches last year averaged 513,000 viewers across ESPN platforms. Ratings for Sunday’s match will be released later this week.
