UPDATE: A few hours after Mark Sullivan’s initial post, TGL confirmed the addition of Motor City Golf Club for the 2027 season.

Motor City Golf Club is the worst-kept secret in (simulator) golf. Earlier this month, reports surfaced that TGL—the upstart simulator golf league from Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy—had filed a trademark for the franchise moniker. While not an outright confirmation, it indicated TGL’s various public comments about expansion were not simply bluster, while also hinting at the expansion squad’s hometown affiliation.

Now we seemingly have confirmation that Motor City Golf Club will be coming to Detroit (by way of Palm Beach Gardens) in the near future, but not in the way we thought we’d hear it. Instead on Monday, Mike Sullivan, a Detroit business owner and founder of Metro Detroit Golfers, proudly shared what appeared to be an official TGL communique to his X account. The only problem? Emblazoned across the top of the screenshot Sullivan shared was the warning “Confidential: Internal and Partners Only.” Whoops.

In media, we get advance news and announcements all the time. Some is for immediate release, some is embargoed until a specific date and time. In order to maintain working relationships with partners, outlets such as Golf Digest honour those release dates. Ever notice how multiple reviews for a blockbuster movie all pop up at the same time? That’s because the embargo lifted. It seems like Sullivan blew through the Motor City Golf Club embargo like the Kool-Aid Man through a brick wall.

Of course, once something is out there on the Internet, there’s no putting it back. Golf news aggregator NUCLR Golf soon picked up the post, and now you’re reading about it on the digital pages of Golf Digest. Cat out of the bag, shark jumped, so on and so forth.

However, thanks to Sullivan’s eagerness, we now know two important pieces of information we didn’t before:

+ Motor City Golf Club will be co-owned by Michael Hamp and Sheila Ford Hamp, principal owners of the Detroit Lions, and Rob Walton, who purchased the Denver Broncos in 2022. They will join Arthur Blank (Atlanta Drive G.C.) as TGL’s other NFL-based ownership group.

+ Motor City Golf Club will begin play in 2027, not 2026 as some had anticipated.

So there you have it. For all intents and purposes, Motor City Golf Club now exists. We don’t know which players will be repping the Motor City badge and we’ll have to wait for TGL to confirm the news before it’s officially official, but as any gasoline-guzzling gear head will tell you, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.

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Main Image: Megan Briggs/TGL