TGL: Xander Schauffele leads New York Golf Club in debut match against Wyndham Clark, The Bay

Yesterday at 09:50 AM

TGL, the brand-new indoor golf league founded by Tiger Woods, begins Tuesday live on ESPN.

After more than two years of anticipation, the time has finally arrived. TGL kicks off on Tuesday night live from the SoFi Center, the incredible South Florida facility that will host every match.

New York Golf Club, led by Xander Schauffele, will face off against The Bay Golf Club, led by 2023 U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark. Each team has four players total, but only three compete in a TGL match at a time. As such, Rickie Fowler and Matt Fitzpatrick will join Schauffele for New York, while Ryder Cup stars Shane Lowry and Ludvig Åberg will play alongside Clark.

Cameron Young, who hails from Westchester, will sit out New York's opening match. For The Bay, Australian Min Woo Lee will be watching from afar.

Match 1: New York Golf Club vs. The Bay Golf Club

Key Team Stats for New York:

Average Age: 31 (2nd Youngest Team)

Total PGA Tour wins: 17 (Schauffele leads with 9)

Major wins: 3 (Schauffele leads with 2)

2024 Average of Total Strokes Gained: 0.7123 (Would be 34th on PGA Tour)

• Xander Schauffele: 1.941 (2nd on PGA Tour)
• Matt Fitzpatrick: 0.406 (60th)
• Rickie Fowler: -0.210 (134th)

Key Team Stats for The Bay:

Average Age: 29.75 (Youngest Team)

Total PGA Tour wins: 7 (Clark and Lowry each with 3)

Major wins: 2 (Clark and Lowry each with 1)

2024 Average of Total Strokes Gained: 0.9176 (Would be 18th on PGA Tour)

• Wyndham Clark: 1.032 (10th)
• Shane Lowry: 0.657 (40th)
• Ludvig Åberg: 1.064 (7th)

The Story:

Schauffele, Clark, Åberg, and Fitzpatrick traveled across four time zones on Monday, from Maui to South Florida, to make their TGL debuts. You have to figure that they will feel a little jet lag come Tuesday evening, yet, at the same time, professional golfers traverse the globe for a living. Perhaps it will not affect them much at all.

Of those four players, Åberg fared the best, posting a T-5 finish thanks to his spectacular play over the weekend. The young Swede fired an 8-under 65 on Saturday and a 9-under 64 on Sunday to finish at 24-under overall, which, remarkably, was 11 shots behind winner Hideki Matsuyama, who set the PGA Tour scoring record at 35-under.

Clark posted a top-20 to start the year, finishing in a tie for 15th at Kapalua. He blistered the ball off the tee, ranking sixth among the field in that category. But he struggled with his iron and wedge play, finishing in the negative in both of those strokes gained categories. That's not a new development either, aligning with how his 2024 season played out.

Finishing one stroke worse than Clark was Fitzpatrick, who tied for 24th at 20-under. Fitzpatrick has not won on the PGA Tour since April 2023, when he defeated Jordan Spieth in a playoff at the RBC Heritage. His last professional victory came the following October at the rain-shortened Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. The Englishman's 2024 was highlighted by three top-10s, which included a solo 5th at The Players and a T-5 at the Memorial. From tee to green, he struggled, but his putter kept him alive at times.

And then, of course, there is Schauffele, who won two major championships last year and cemented himself as one of the best players in the world. But Schauffele arrived in Maui last week as the pre-tournament favorite and did not have his best stuff at Kapalua. Rounds of 72-70-66-67 placed him in a tie for 30th and 18 strokes behind Matsuyama.

The two players who did not play in Maui are Shane Lowry and Rickie Fowler.

Lowry does not play at Kapalua and once said he would never fly 25 hours after the holidays to play in a tournament with such low scores. The Irishman last played competitively at the DP World Tour Championship in November and tied for third.

It's a different story for Rickie Fowler, however. Fowler, who snapped a four-year winless drought in July 2023 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, struggled mightily in 2024. His only top 10 of the season came at the ZOZO Championship in October, and before that, his best finish was a T-16 at the Sanderson Farms Championship in Mississippi. His stats reflected poorly, too.

Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation's Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.