TGL had a problem. Then came a strange, chaotic new hole

“Give me one more.”

It was four o’clock in the sunset inside a strange stadium and Billy Horschel was holding out his hand.

The worker threw another Titleist at him, Horschel poked it and stepped back, shaking his head slightly as he measured the large red stones that appeared on the screen in front of him. Then he started laughing.

Horschel had wrapped up his final tournament of the season the previous day. He was driving to Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., to check out the latest developments inside the SoFi Center, home of the nearby golf course that is TGL. He shot a few promos for his team, the defending champion Atlanta Drive. He was practicing on the new, extended green, hitting various chip shots alongside new teammate Chris Gotterup. He then turned from the short game area to the big screen to check out the league’s most exciting changes: its new holes. And when he and Gotterup were still stuck together an hour later, something quickly became clear.

TGL had a new, unexpected star: Stinger.

Horschel took out the driver and headed straight for this time, planning to hit a high hook on either side of the large overhanging red slab. He and Gotterup had already spent a dozen times testing different club choices for a low-flying line drive down the left hole. They joined an unofficial competition as professionals chased the lowest launch angle, measured by Full Swing guards behind the teeing area. (Other experts were launching the ball less than one degree.) But now Horschel was going higher, chasing another way. He stepped out of his shoes. He stared hopefully up at the screen. His ball went up a promising line, pulling right to left. It then collided with a large sandstone arch that created a chaotic new golf course in par 4 and fell into the water.

He stretched out his hand for another ball.

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STINGER ROCKS. That’s not a geological pun. No just a geological pun, I should say. Instead it’s an almost universally held view among those of us on the rare topic of sports fans who have decided that mixed-sport golf might just be ours.

If TGL had a problem with Season 1 it was that its plots, while interesting if they existed in real life, were common enough that they had a tendency to run together. Its creators admitted they weren’t sure where they would end up in a world without borders. Were the golfers and golf fans and this new golf league looking for real life style golf holes – or were they looking for a twist?

As someone who has played an unhealthy amount of Golden Tee – we have it in our New York office and it’s been a happy hour routine for the four-plus years I’ve spent there – I knew what I wanted. Bring on the weird.

And no, I don’t think the league took its lines directly from the arcade game. But I think they embraced the same creative ethos.

So, when TGL teased its new hole in a social media announcement in December, it was fun to watch people’s reactions. Social media seems designed for satire, cynicism or both – but the general feeling this time was something different. Mostly it was hell yeah. That’s how TGL’s tweet got nearly two million views. And the real thing is as weird and fun as advertised.

What’s different about the Stinger? The tee shot asks a question we’ve never seen outside of, “real” green grass golf: Can you hit it under this rock? That doesn’t mean it will work everywhere. If you put it on a PGA Tour course the players might walk away in protest. The beauty of the hole is that if you hit it too high, if you don’t get the ball out, your ball will go into a watery grave or come right back to you on the tee. As a professional golfer you will look and feel very stupid. But in this format everything is good. TGL is not “real” green grass golf. Stinger takes full advantage of that.

I WAS SICK ALL THE TIME I read this Q&A between the PGA Tour’s Paul Hodowanic and inspired course builder Agustin Pizá, the man behind this hole and a few other TGL designs that will make you sit up and pay attention. It’s easy to laugh at anything that appears on the TGL big screen, but Pizá is an artist and a scientist. (The Alchemist, in his own words.) He studied for five years to get his degree in architecture. He does everything by hand, writing excessively in his notebook. He pursued “high artistic expression” through minimal design. And he says things like:

“Let’s take Le Corbusier and that movement of ‘less is more.’ What you’re looking at is how can we create the best aspect of, say, risk and reward in a minimal way? Architecture plays with forms.”

Pizá has been the man behind Spear, the risk-rewarding triangular brainiac since Season 1. But he felt he could push the boundaries, telling Hodowonic that “this season I wanted to play vertically.” His take on the Cenote, another great new hole? “I like to question everything. Why can’t we play the hole from back to front?” But Stinger came to another calling, too: “One of the first things I wrote in my notebook was, ‘Let’s do an ode to Tiger Woods,'” he said.

That’s how Stinger was carried. It is a monument to the greatest player of the generation and his signature. Woods saw the hole in the tournament for the first time on Tuesday, when he tried to talk Jupiter Links teammate Max Homa into a successful putting strategy. (It didn’t work; Homa hit a rock. I believe more than half of the Stingers have now hit a rock or shot into the water. And finally Jup Links lost the hole.)