TGL’s new post-apocalyptic golf hole comes with a message

A confession: I can’t stop thinking about the TGL course architecture.

Recently I sketched some thoughts on the brilliance of Stinger (and also Cenote), two mind-boggling additions to this season’s repertoire of mega-simulator holes, where professionals outdo each other in full-swing measured, low-launch competitions and send drivers flying 100 feet over the green on a par-3 on purpose. These two were designed by Agustin Pizá, a visionary architect who seems to have found his calling in a golf world without borders, who takes the opportunity to ask questions about golf in four dimensions, playing holes that move forward. And backwards plus other inspired brainteasers.

See you Thursday, another came a shocking decline.

The anti-Pizá in my eyes was Gil Hanse – perhaps the most popular golf course architect in the real world and a TGL addition for season 2. I don’t say anti-Pizá because Hanse is like a wet blanket; he’s literally been talking about “fun” in architecture class his entire career and was game for this hilarious one SoFi Center outage. But he is undeniably more of a traditionalist; In addition to his original designs, he is an expert in real-life restorations, and in his introductory remarks as part of this TGL experiment, he cited some Golden Age designers as sources of inspiration.

(Editor’s note: My fixation on TGL stems in part from our recent visit, on YouTube or below)

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“On a few of our TGL holes, we decided to honor the concepts, thoughts and styles of some of the greatest designers in golf history, such as AW Tillinghast, Alister MacKenzie, Donald Ross, etc.,” Hanse said.

His debut design, ‘Stone and Steeple’, followed that ethos. The 590-yard par-5 seemed like a credible addition to a country club in a rural New England town.

There was a graveyard on the left – every TGL match is a reminder of our ultimate mortality – but Hanse referenced Taconic Golf Club as inspiration (where he led a restoration in Williamstown, Massachusetts, perhaps the greatest place on earth) and a press release compared the hole’s fairway bunkering to Hanse’s work on Baltusrol’s Lower Course in New Jersey; that’s a Tillinghast restoration. This was a tribute to the Golden Age on the big screen.

Then this one came.

“The Last Toll” is a 200-yard window into a future where a huge city has fallen into disrepair, but a brave greenskeeper perseveres. The centerpiece is a gigantic section of bridge, still standing even though everything around it is broken, which you have to navigate through to land anywhere near the green. “In a world that fell apart, this bridge still decides who gets through,” TGL’s press release reads.

Old Tom Morris has his “Road Hole” in St. Andrews. Now Hanse has his “The Road” hole at TGL. From next week we will all witness as teams take on an unprecedented challenge in an unforgiving landscape – the kind of hole Cormac McCarthy would be proud of.

Hans’s video explanation is remarkably terrified. While hearing the hole name out loud adds a new dimension – The Last Toll is a clever homophone for The Last Hole – he casually mentions that his team was “trying to look at a dystopian, post-apocalyptic version of the future,” even though no team in the history of course design has ever used that as a North Star.

“These vertical hazards have always been interesting to us,” he says, downplaying the fact that this “vertical hazard” looks suspiciously like a zombified Brooklyn Bridge. (It is unclear whether this is any form of commentary congestion pricing.)

His tribute to Tillinghast already seems like a distant memory.

I drew some Golden-Tee parallels with the Piza holes, which immediately expanded our ideas of what a golf hole can be. Now Hanse goes a step further into the fantasy realm; he throws us into the middle of a story. What happened to make the cityscape look like this? Who or what is responsible? Are the members of Jupiter Links and LA Golf Club the last six people on Earth? And seriously, who gives it green water? Hanse sends a message with this design: I can also adapt to this strange alternate reality.

(Maybe there’s another question worth asking: After a graveyard opener and a post-apocalyptic follow-up, should we be worried about you, Gil?)

Of course, this is all ridiculous. And TGL still doesn’t have to be for you. But it’s fun to see some of golf’s brightest and most creative minds pushed beyond their day jobs to become increasingly creative. The designers push boundaries and so do the players. It’s not real golf. It’s something different.

Let’s see what’s next.

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