Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s virtual golf league playing for £17m prize fund

Rory McIlroy on Ryder Cup

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s innovative golf league TGL will see 24 PGA Tour stars battling it out for a share of the £17 million prize pot. In recent weeks TGL bosses have rolled out a whole host of new updates, including players, teams, and the format and rules.

The latest comes in the way of how much prize money will be on offer during the 15-week season, which kicks off in less than two months on January 9. TMRW Sports CEO – and Woods and McIlroy’s business partner – Mike McCarley discussed the purse on the Marchand and Ourand Podcast.

“They’re playing for $21 million (£17m), the purse is $9 million (£7.4m) to the winning team, so it’s legit competition,” the TGL boss revealed. “And these guys are some of the most competitive guys on the planet.”

The innovative league has drawn many comparisons to its rivals over at LIV Golf in recent months, so unsurprisingly the point of prize money is yet another hot talking point. Whilst TGL is unable to match the dizzy heights of LIV’s Saudi riches, there is no doubt the innovative setup provides a hefty bonus for those competing.

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Amid the comparisons both McIlroy and Woods have been quick to play down the similarities to the breakaway league, having both been among the LIV setup’s biggest critics over the past 17 months. Distancing the two leagues, McIlroy said: “I think [TGL] is meant to be complimentary [to professional golf], this is not meant to be disrespectful in any way.

“Whenever Mike [McCarley] brought this idea to Tiger and me, one of the first things we said is ‘if we are going to do this we are going to have to partner with the PGA Tour in some way and make this complimentary’…

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“I don’t want to sit here and talk about LIV but you could make the argument that they haven’t innovated enough from what traditional golf is, or they have innovated too much that they are not traditional golf.

“They are sort of caught in no-man’s land, whereas this is so far removed from what we know golf to be.” A similar stance was taken by Woods, who added: “Some of the stuff I’ve seen in LIV.… I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. Here it’s very simple.”

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