Latest news with #AtlantaDriveGC
NBC Sports
06-05-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Billy Horschel's Ryder Cup dreams likely dashed with this announcement
Billy Horschel's Ryder Cup dreams are likely dashed – for this year at least. Horschel announced Tuesday morning that he is set to undergo right hip surgery early next week in Colorado and will be sidelined multiple months, perhaps the rest of this season. 'It's an unfortunate situation with so many great events left on the calendar, but this is a preventative measure,' Horschel said. 'I'm already itching to start rehab, get back to practicing, and I look forward to returning to the course sometime around late summer/early fall.' Health update. After consulting with doctors and my team, I have decided to have right hip surgery early next week out in Colorado. It's an unfortunate situation with so many great events left on the calendar but this is a preventative measure. I'm already itching to start rehab,… — Billy Horschel (@BillyHo_Golf) May 6, 2025 Horschel withdrew from the Zurich Classic, where he was set to partner with Tom Hoge, citing a lower body injury. The 38-year-old Horschel had made 12 starts this season, posting two top-10s but also missing five cuts. He currently sits No. 58 in FedExCup points, No. 24 in the Official World Golf Ranking and No. 16 in U.S. Ryder Cup points. Horschel also competed in the inaugural season of TGL, where his Atlanta Drive GC won the title. Horschel's performance, passion and energy while playing on that team prompted many to tab him for a potential Ryder Cup debut this fall at Bethpage. The matches are scheduled for Sept. 25-28, so even if Horschel returns before then, he would need to receive a captain's pick from Keegan Bradley, and even then, he likely would not have many, if any, reps. 'Every time we're in a Ryder Cup year, I'm very well aware that I haven't been part of a Ryder Cup team,' Horschel told Golf Channel on April 1. 'But I can't solely focus on that. I can't have that be the driving force. At the end of the day, I've got to try and continue to get better as a player, continue to improve as a person, and hopefully through those gains and improvement, I can finally make a Ryder Cup team. I've done a lot of things in my career that I'm very grateful for and the wins I've had, and do I feel like I should be on a Ryder Cup team? Yeah, but have I done what I need to in terms of playing three, four, five months of consistent golf leading into the Ryder Cup? I haven't done that, and that's sort of been the Achilles heel a little bit; I just haven't played as well over a period of time as the other 12 guys. 'I'm in the best situation that I think I've ever been in my career, at this stage, six months out from a Ryder Cup. I think if I can continue to improve and continue to play well and play consistently well, hopefully it lends itself to being a part of a Ryder Cup team. 'I would love to be a part of that zoo in New York. … It's going to be the craziest Ryder Cup ever.'
Forbes
16-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
From TGL To Travel Sports: Fastbreak AI Is A Scheduling Power Play
PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLORIDA - MARCH 25: Billy Horschel of Atlanta Drive GC celebrates on the 14th ... More green during their TGL presented by SoFi match against the New York Golf Club at SoFi Center on March 25, 2025 in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Cliff Hawkins/TGL/TGL Golf via Getty Images) No professional or amateur sports schedule will please all players, fans and stakeholders. A well-orchestrated schedule should rankle the feathers of all relevant constituencies equally—in there lies the challenge. 'Scheduling in general is the art of equally managing disappointment. You want to make sure everybody equally hates you—then you've done a good job. If one team thinks 'oh my God, this is amazing, this is fantastic' then you've probably done something wrong,' explains Fastbreak AI CEO John Stewart. Stewart, a serial entrepreneur based in Charlotte, North Carolina, made his mark with MapAnything—a location intelligence and route optimization system run on Salesforce's platform. Features included territory management, multi-day route planning, and location-based workflows to enhance field operations. Under his leadership, MapAnything grew to $22 million in annual recurring revenue before being acquired by the customer relationship management behemoth itself in 2019 for $250 million. Its DNA still powers what is now known as Salesforce Maps. Following the sale, Stewart was bound by a three-year non-compete that kept him out of the scheduling space. Since that's his forte, he used the time to reset before plotting his next move. Like many temporarily sidelined tech impresarios, he invested in startups, dabbled in rental properties, sat on boards, mentored and took on occasional consulting work. Harnessing AI to build out schedules for leagues–condenses a grind of a process that could take weeks to finish tweaking into just a few hours. Fastbreak AI has become a pro sports scheduling goliath. When your client roster includes dozens of professional sports leagues—like the NBA, WNBA, NHL, MLS, Serie A and Premiership Rugby—it's clear the industry has taken notice. At the core of Fastbreak's platform is an algorithm that weighs dozens of variables—venue availability, player rest, travel, broadcast windows—and adapts to whatever constraints a league values most, whether that's competitive balance, minimizing back-to-backs, or boosting TV ratings. 'We are sort of the 800 lb gorilla," Stewart said. 'I don't have to convince you to use Microsoft Office. Here's the validation: there are twelve or thirteen people in the world that really understand this stuff, in terms of the optimization that applies to sports scheduling and ten of them work for us. We have a density of expertise and the fact that we are so broad in our customer base gives us a unique ability to digest new problems that we see. Every league has a unique problem.' The company, now the dominant player in the space, has been on an acquisition spree of late—bringing four companies into the fold in the past six months, an effort that has substantially expanded its footprint, with its software now scheduling 55 professional sports leagues. Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy-backed TMRW Sports is a recent client—and also an investor—onboarding the tech after TGL's inaugural season schedule was already set. But they will be using it moving forward to create a schedule for next season that balances optimal broadcast viewership with player availability. Most pro sports teams travel together and follow a predictable cadence of home and away games. But TGL presented an entirely different challenge. In professional golf, players build their own tournament calendars—and in a league where team matchups, TV broadcasts, and individual preferences all have to align, Fastbreak AI faced a complex puzzle. 'They have their teams, but every one of those golfers has an independent and different schedule. There's a schedule of broadcasts they have to meet, a schedule of match play for their teams and they have to accommodate the individual schedules of the players on the six teams,' Stewart explained. Most of Fastbreak AI's remaining competitors are consultants, some of whom rely on third-party optimization engines like Gurobi or Xpress. Stewart's co-founders, Dr. Chris Groer and Dr. Tim Carnes are data science and mathematical optimization experts who previously worked on the NBA's scheduling system while at KPMG, when the league contracted the firm to build an in-house scheduling solution. Stewart had initially recruited them to work on MapAnything, and when Fastbreak AI launched, one of the first calls they made was to their old pals at the NBA. At the time, the league was developing the concept for its in-season tournament—a scenario that pushed the limits of their existing scheduling software and gave Fastbreak AI an opportunity to showcase the capabilities of its platform's custom repair algorithm. 'It was pretty obvious they were going to be a customer and they wanted to be on our cap table,' Stewart said. 'So, we opened up a small friends and family round. Then in May of 2023 we actually launched the software platform—so for two years now the platform has been on the marketplace,' Stewart said. Play simulation is an area Stewart's team has been contemplating exploring—looking at player tendencies to then make assumptions on match length. 'We don't currently do that, we are looking at it to see how it would apply. This is a huge problem in any type of combat sport. They are always behind schedule and athletes never know when to show up because a match can be over in fifteen seconds or it could take six minutes,' Stewart explained. Simulations could even be used to potentially juice the PGA Tour's pace of play, a perennial pain point. Theoretically, if certain players tend to play a few minutes slower depending on their pairing, an algorithm could solve for that—generating more efficient groupings, at least in pre-cut rounds before performance determines the tee sheet. 'It's definitely possible, there is a math problem to be solved there and we've thought about how it could be applied to any math-based sport.' Predictive viewership is another area Fastbreak AI is plowing ahead on. They have a product coming out later this year that models for eyeballs as a schedule optimization variable. 'This then has an impact on the value of media rights and of course that is the way we are looking on it as well,' Stewart said. Fastbreak AI's professional contracts help subsidize the development of its scheduling engine, which is then applied across both pro and youth sports. 'The media rights deal of the NBA is not the same as the Greek Basketball League—both of which are customers—but it's exactly the same platform,' Stewart said. The company adjusts its pricing model based on the rights package value of each league, effectively tethering service costs to the revenue potential of what clients are selling to broadcasters. 'We will bring our capabilities to the youth level to make it more efficient and a better experience for the parents. We are doing a whole sports approach, from the grassroots to professional leagues using the same technology,' Stewart said. He would know—Stewart has five kids and has logged plenty of hours navigating the chaos of youth travel sports firsthand.
USA Today
26-03-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
After successful first season, Rory McIlroy wants to see TGL makes these two changes in 2026
HOUSTON — The first season of TGL is in the books. Justin Thomas' Atlanta Drive GC beat New York 2-0 in the best-of-three championship series Tuesday thanks to Billy Horschel's late heroics in the second match. It was a thrilling end to the inaugural season of the indoor simulator league, which was founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy's TMRW Sports. McIlroy wasn't in attendance at the season finale of Tomorrow's Golf League, as he's teeing it up at the 2025 Texas Children's Houston Open in his final start before the Masters. He was tuned in however. On Wednesday after his pro-am, Golfweek caught up with McIlroy about the first year of TGL. The world No. 2 said he was impressed with how much the players bought into the new experience. "I think everyone that played had an amazing time," McIlroy said. "Even the guys that played one match, whether it be Nick Dunlap or Tony Finau, they all just talked about what an amazing experience it was. So I think for that, having player buy-in, if the players are enthusiastic about it, then that will translate into the crowd or the media or whoever the audience is being enthusiastic about it as well." "I think that was amazing and that the players really got into it and we were able to create a product that the players really liked." Being that the league was in its inaugural season, there were plenty of bumps along the way. But TGL was proactive, including changing rules a couple weeks in to help make matches more competitive, and it paid off in the long run. "I think being able to change on the fly, so obviously change in that hammer rule midseason was huge," McIlroy added. "You know, there was a couple of really non-competitive matches at the start, and then once we changed the hammer rules, um it it became a lot more competitive or at least had the potential to stay competitive with how the hammer rules started to work. So I think that was a really good thing." The league carries some significant momentum into year No. 2, and TGL is already in discussions with ESPN about building a schedule for 2026. There has also been talk for expansion and other changes to grow the league. What does McIlroy think TGL can build upon in 2026? "I think we could do better job with being a little more imaginative with the golf holes, like design golf holes that you would never be able to play in real life," McIlroy said. "I think that would be pretty cool, right? I think that something that we could do a better job of. I would say the putting surface needs looked that, like I think it's much harder to hole putts on that TGL green than it is the hole putts on on a normal green. We could have a look at changing the putting surface maybe,as well. "Apart from that, ESPN is happy. Sponsors are happy. The players are really bought into it, so as a first season has went, I think it's went really, really well."
Dubai Eye
26-03-2025
- Sport
- Dubai Eye
Atlanta Drive top New York Golf Club for inaugural TGL title
Atlanta Drive GC staged an unlikely comeback from a steep deficit to win the inaugural TGL championship in style, 4-3 over New York Golf Club on Tuesday night in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. After failing to win any of the first 11 holes and falling behind 3-0, a combination of precise execution and good tactical use of the "hammer" propelled Justin Thomas, Billy Horschel and Patrick Cantlay to victory. Horschel sank a critical 17-foot double-breaking putt at the 14th to collect two points and pull Atlanta into the lead, before teammate Cantlay iced it with a deft pitch shot stone dead at the final hole. The winners split a purse of $9 million (AED 33 million), with New York receiving half that amount. "I said it multiple times: It's my house," Horschel said. "This is something different than what we play every week. We want to entertain; that's what this is about. It's been great to be with all three of these guys." Atlanta won the first match of the best-of-three series on Monday, which left the New York team of Xander Schauffele, Rickie Fowler and Cameron Young needing to sweep both scheduled matches on Tuesday. "We did not want to go to another match. We're all just thrilled that we're not playing right now," Horschel said. View this post on Instagram A post shared by ESPN (@espn) Added Thomas of the season overall: "It's completely exceeded my expectations. The competitiveness, once the playoffs got here, it was not chippy, but it was competitive. We wanted to win." For so long it looked like New York would take it to a Game 3, as Atlanta could not buy a putt and the Big Apple team cruised to an almost but not quite insurmountable lead. In front of a raucous crowd at the indoor arena, there was even a moment of controversy as Schauffele threw the hammer, an orange towel, just as Thomas was about to place his second hand on the putter grip for an 11-foot putt at the eighth hole. Under the rules, once the player has addressed the ball it's too late for the hammer, but the rules official deemed Thomas did not have both hands on the putter, so the hammer stood. Atlanta declined to accept it and Thomas conceded the hole without putting, which gave New York one point to go 2-0 up. The lead did not last.
USA Today
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
TGL finals payout: See how much money will be paid out at the 2025 SoFi Cup
TGL finals payout: See how much money will be paid out at the 2025 SoFi Cup Show Caption Hide Caption Celebrities attending Tiger Woods TGL golf matches at SoFi Center While most fans attending TGL golf matches since January are ordinary people, there has been no lack of big-named celebrities at SoFi Center. The TGL finals, called the SoFi Cup, will see Atlanta Drive GC face off against New York Golf Club. The total prize pool for the TGL's inaugural season is $21 million. The winning team in the TGL finals will receive $9 million, which translates to $2.25 million per player. Some of the top golfers in the world will be playing for a different kind of championship in the TGL finals. The inaugural season of Tomorrow's Golf League founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy won't see either star playing for the title but the teams in the finals will get a part of the prize purse worth more than $20 million. Here's a look at the purse for TGL and how much the winners will take home. Who is playing in the TGL finals, called the SoFi Cup? The TGL championship is the SoFi Cup and it comes down to Atlanta Drive GC vs. New York Golf Club. Atlanta will roll out a lineup of Patrick Cantlay, Billy Horschel and Justin Thomas, while NYGC will feature Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele and Cameron Young. Watch TGL golf live on Fubo (free trial) What is the total purse for TGL? The total prize money dispensed across all TGL teams this season totals $21 million. What is the winner's share for the TGL championship? The winning team will get $9 in prize money. Split between the four members, that comes to $2.25 million per player. For comparison, TGL co-founder Rory McIlroy took home $4.5 million for winning The Players Championship on March 17. Winning the Valspar Championship is worth $1.566 million. What's the breakdown of the payout for each TGL team? First place: $9 million Second place: $4.5 million Third place (LAGC): $2.25 million Fourth place (The Bay): $2 million Fifth place (Jupiter Links): $1.75 million Sixth place (Boston Common): $1.5 million When are TGL finals? How to watch on TV, streaming Match 1: 9 p.m. Monday on ESPN2/ESPN+ 9 p.m. Monday on ESPN2/ESPN+ Match 2: 7 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN/ESPN+ 7 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN/ESPN+ Match 3 (if necessary): 9 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN/ESPN+ 9 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN/ESPN+ Live streaming: ESPN+ | Fubo (free trial) We occasionally recommend interesting products and services. If you make a purchase by clicking one of the links, we may earn an affiliate fee. USA TODAY Network newsrooms operate independently, and this doesn't influence our coverage.
