Since joining TMRW Sports in late 2022, Macaulay has been the technology lead behind TGL presented by SoFi — from the design of the world’s largest golf simulator to the multi-layered, hybrid tracking technology inside the arena.

Before joining TMRW Sports, he was Chief Technology Officer at Topgolf, where he helped drive innovations like Toptracer that transformed both fan experience and how golf data is captured and used.

In a recent Reddit AMA, fans had the opportunity to ask Andrew questions on TGL’s technology, the league’s hole designs, how the simulator works, competition format, rules, and much more.

RELATED: Read the full Ask Me Anything With Andrew Macaulay on Reddit

Below is a selection of some of the best questions and answers...

Editor's note: Some questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Question: What was the initial conversation like back when TGL was just an idea on paper?

Macaulay's answer: It was such a thrill to be involved early on with this team to take Mike/Tiger/Rory’s vision and turn it into massive scale reality. We went from “this can’t be done”, to “can this be done?”, to “this is how we can do it”. Then we did a lot of building and testing to get it right. We found that movie studio sound stages were the only locations big enough for even a scaled down testing facility while we waited for SoFi Center to be purpose built. So we used several of those over the course of two years.

Question: With the announcement this year of WTGL, what will be different about their courses?

Macaulay's answer: Plans are for the holes to be the same for WTGL [as TGL], but tee boxes and yardages will be adjusted accordingly to force the same risk-reward decisions, which are part of what makes team match play exciting. And like we did this past offseason, we will continue to tweak and update hole designs this next offseason – maybe with some additional challenges specifically for WTGL.

Question: Any chances for crossover with golf video games, specifically ones where you can design courses?

Macaulay's answer: I would be interested in that, too. But to start, you can play a few of the TGL holes on PGA TOUR Pro Golf on Apple Arcade.

Question: Is there any noticeable difference in how accurate the ball flight data is when hitting from the front boxes versus the back boxes since the actual ball is not flying as far before it hits the screen?

Macaulay's answer: There is no difference. The shots hit from the front box, being shots 70 yards or less on the virtual hole, have naturally slower ball speeds. Therefore, they take long enough to travel to the screen for our optical Toptracer tracking to see it and get plenty of data to extrapolate where it would have gone if the screen wasn’t there to stop it.

Also a reason why the back box is 35 yards away from the screen is that a 200 mph plus ball speed drive has enough time in the air before it hits the screen.

Question: Was it purely the connection with Tiger that resulted in Full Swing being the monitor instead of the two that are largely considered the gold standard in Trackman and GCQuad?

Macaulay's answer: I’ve been lucky to be part of a lot of comparisons of golf tracking and simulator tech over the last 10 years, which provided me insider views on the strengths and weaknesses of them all. I picked the best selection of different solutions to create a hybrid mix of technology for this unique situation – the world’s largest golf simulator and what we consider to be the most accurate.

First, we wanted the players to hit off real surfaces, including a ball buried in the rough or from sand which can cause interference to some tech solutions (e.g. cloud of sand flying up with the ball). We also wanted the player to place the ball anywhere in a large tee box area - staying away from other divots throughout the match and not being required to place the ball in a specific spot during a match. Therefore, solutions that require a ball to be placed in a small area to be picked up don’t work.

Radar solutions can have issues in an indoor environment with lots of metal reflective surfaces – like what we have in SoFi Center. That all led to the best hybrid solution being a combination of optical tracking of the ball flying through the air and radar tracking of the club and ball at the moment of impact. Basically TGL uses a custom combination of Toptracer Range, custom array of multiple Full Swing KIT’s working together as one to cover the whole tee box, and a custom version of Full Swing’s simulator software and physics engine.

Full Swing is the gold standard for simulators so basing our customized version on that was my decision. Then, Toptracer for the tracking of the ball through the air and extrapolating where it would have gone. Thirty five yards of real ball flight data is so much more than any other simulator ever built. And the more data to be able to extrapolate from, the more accurate the result.

Ultimately, this hybrid solution using multiple technologies gives us the best accuracy and flexibility for a fluid competition.