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PALM BEACH GARDENS — In the middle of a serious TGL practice session last Monday inside the SoFi Center, members of the Los Angeles Golf Club decided to have some fun.
Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa and Justin Rose placed a matt in the main lobby by the fan shop and started chipping balls through an executive suite next to the television booth and onto the green. The objective was to see if anyone could knock it in the hole from outside the arena floor.
“It started off we were just meant to hit 10 each, and we hit like 10 buckets each, so the competitive juices started kicking in,” Rose said. “Then you started to get into a bit of a flow where you’re beginning to hone in on it and you can feel yourself getting close.”
“Collin holed it a couple times,” Fleetwood said, “in the wrong hole.”
More: Where is TGL golf located? What to know about SoFi Center, Tiger Woods’ golf league arena
The fun continued Tuesday for L.A., which turned another TGL match into a rout, clinching its 6-2 victory over Boston Common Golf and Rory McIlory on the 11th hole after leading 5-0 after triples.
The night featured Morikawa breaking out into dance after good shots and Rose holding his ear and saying “I can’t hear you” while looking at McIlroy after a Morikawa tee shot led to another L.A. birdie.
And L.A. so confident in victory it never once considered throwing The Hammer. “We don’t need that Hammer,” Fleetwood told fans urging L.A. to toss the flag.
Having won both its matches and 15 of 18 holes (12 were halved) against Boston and Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links, L.A. is becoming the favorite in the first year of this unique indoor golf league created by McIlroy, whose team has lost both its matches (one in overtime) and Woods.
“You want to be focused and keep encouraging the guys … ‘okay, no complacency, stay focused, this is your shot, you ready, let’s go,’ ” Rose said. “And good planning. Then all the planning was in place and you just have to execute.
“The fast start helps because then the other team, they have to start to press. Maybe they chase pins. Who knows, maybe make mistakes, maybe start to get aggressive on the greens. Obviously we had them exactly where we wanted them today, but we just kept piling on the pressure.
Preparation the key for Los Angeles Golf Club
L.A.’s secret sauce is not all fun and games. The team, which also includes Sahith Theegala, who was not active Tuesday, spent several hours inside SoFi Center the day before its match against Boston strategizing and trying to figure out the synthetic greens.
In other words, treating this as much as a competition as a fun night out with the boys.
“Like Tommy said, out there early,” Rose said. “Maybe what surprised him is how much we’ve actually treated it like this is exactly what we do. This is how we prepare for any other big tournament that we play in. We are competitive. We want to be prepared.”
Fleetwood’s missed L.A.’s first match with Theegala filling one of the three roster spots.
“I think that’s exactly how we worked as a team out there,” Rose continued. “Even in practice, we were sort of getting the rhythm going … ‘okay, how does the triples feel?’ … ‘how do we read putts?’ … ‘in this scenario, who’s going to call the shot clock?’ … try to give the other player comfort and time. So there was a lot of mini-strategies out there, obviously, and then you have to hit golf shots, which these two lads are pretty awesome at.”
After TGL’s first break in the schedule the week of Feb. 9, Los Angeles puts its unbeaten record on the line Feb. 17 during the league’s first triple header. L.A. faces Atlanta (1-0) to start off the three-match day.
The biggest difference was putting. L.A. made 32 feet of putts, Boston 5 feet. L.A. converted 88% of its short putts (up to 10 feet) compared to Boston’s 20%.
“We spent a lot of time trying to figure out these greens and reading them,” Morikawa said. “They’re really difficult. Around the holes don’t always go the same way so you’ve got to figure it out and feel it out while we’re there.
“It was nice to hit some close but also make some putts out there, and I think this is just another learning curve for us to figure out, okay, how do we keep putting well if not better.”
Keep putting well. Keep playing well. All while having a little fun. And, most importantly, playing to win.
“Got to play the right way out here and we’ve got to win,” Rose said. “We came here to win, and that’s what it’s all about.”
Tom D’Angelo is a senior sports columnist and reporter for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at tdangelo@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Los Angeles Golf Club dominating TGL with wins over Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy
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