What happens if the simulator goes wrong?

The technology that powers TGL, the indoor golf league founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports, is amazing.

The 3,392-square-foot simulator screen the players will hit on is 24 times larger than the screens you can find at, say, your local Dick’s Sporting Goods. Shots will be tracked by 18 Full Swing radar devices and eight Top Tracer flash cameras, each designed to calculate with incredible accuracy the path, spin and trajectory of a golf ball traveling 170 mph or faster. The green, which players will hit on when facing a short game shot of 50 yards or less, sits on a 41-yard tee; beneath it are 567 hydraulic jacks that can create peaks and valleys in every inch of placement.

“There’s a lot of technology,” said Mike McCarley, CEO of TMRW Sports Group, TGL’s parent company, at a press conference last month. “It’s bigger and better than I could have imagined.”

TGL’s $50 million stadium in West Palm Beach, Fla., is literally unlike anything you’ve ever seen the game in, and it’ll be fun to watch live when the league kicks off Tuesday. But all that splashy technology also begs the question: What happens if it doesn’t work?

We’re not talking about a doomsday situation here, when, say, the simulator’s main frame crashes or Cameron Young’s arrow smashes the screen – but even more so what happens when a small-scale error disrupts gameplay or threatens the integrity of the competition? Because if you’ve ever played simulated golf, you know that technology isn’t perfect. Data captured from any given swing can be flawed. Shots can fail to register at all. Indeed bad shots can miss the screen entirely (okay, that’s due to human error). Who knows, the machine may reset right after the player connects.

Impossible scenarios? It cannot be doubted. But if we’ve learned anything from the traditional version of this crazy game, let alone the version that relies on tens of millions of dollars of largely untested technology, the most unexpected situations can and do happen.

TGL knows this, which is why the league’s official rules include procedures for “inaccurate statistics” and “unregistered shots.”

The league hasn’t released all the rules for the competition, but it shared with GOLF.com how tech hiccups will be governed — and in short, yes, if something goes wrong and the shot can’t be accurately recorded, it can be replayed. . But as always with the rules of golf, the specifics are nuanced.

Here, in italics, is how that section of the TGL rulebook reads:

The referee or booth official will be able to recognize a shot during the screen play as a “wrong count” at his discretion to maintain the integrity of the game and conduct the competition. They will have the authority to take a “re-beat.” Circumstances in which this may occur include, but are not limited to, the following: