Hammer Man

The large platform rolled into the SoFi Center for the trophy presentation was filled with familiar faces. ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt conducted the ceremony crowning the Atlanta Drive as champions of TGL’s inaugural season in 2025 and standing to his right were the most integral parts of the winning squad: team owner and American business tycoon Arthur Blank as well as team members Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Billy Horschel and Lucas Glover, a foursome with a combined 38 PGA Tour titles, three majors and three FedEx Cups. And then there was a guy wearing an Atlanta Drive hoodie who even avid golf fans didn’t recognize—even though he may have been the biggest reason for the win.

That guy’s name is Ben Helmrath, and his official role with the team changes depending on who you ask, from manager to team coordinator to caddie. What’s clear is that he played a vital role in Atlanta winning the first TGL title and is hopefully he can help the team pull off a repeat as the 2026 season nears the playoffs.

“He was critically important,” Cantlay said that night after Atlanta defeated New York Golf Club in the championship match. “He did his homework better than anybody. He was the mastermind behind all the hammer strategy and making sure we all were prepared for the holes.”

So who exactly is this mastermind?

“Whatever you want to call it, I’m essentially the players’ support function,” Helmrath says. “It’s a different environment, format, strategy, skill, etc. The last thing I want is for them to be burdened in the moment by a shot clock or thinking about how to translate to the virtual world, what the next step is gonna be, or what to do about a hammer. They’re not used to that, so I just say, ‘Let me focus on TGL. You guys just go be world-class golfers.’ ”

Helmrath spends most of his working time as the vice president of merchandising hard goods for PGA Tour Superstore. In this case, the 36-year-old’s day job directly led to his night one. After first hearing about TGL in June 2022, Helmrath let boss Arthur Blank know he wanted to be involved. Although he never played competitive golf, the Georgia Tech stats major and Duke MBA grad got down to nearly scratch after taking a job with Walmart out of business school. “ Living in northwest Arkansas, there’s a lot of golf courses and not a lot of other things to do,” Helmrath cracks. By the time TGL was coming together, he felt he was in a unique position to help due to his gig at the golf-retail chain.

“ I told Arthur and others from day one, ‘Look, this is my age group as the core customer. I am a golf fanatic, and I knew golf simulation better than most in our organization,” says Helmrath, who lives in Atlanta with his wife and two young kids. “It was in my wheelhouse, so I just threw it out there and next thing I know, I was asked to do it.”

Helmrath first met with the Atlanta Drive players two months before their first match to get to know them but also to pitch some strategies. He said the transition from being more like a “U.S. Open ball boy” (his counterparts on other teams mostly stuck to cleaning players’ clubs) to earning the guys’ trust was made easier by Cantlay being such a data-driven golfer—and by everyone working for one man in particular.

“Ultimately, we both have the same boss in this environment, and that’s Mr. Blank. I’m like, ‘Look, you guys might be the pros, but when you go back to your homes on Monday night, I go back to Atlanta, and I have to see him in the meeting rooms and explain why we lost,” Helmrath says. “I felt like every week we just kept getting closer and closer … and then by the playoffs, we were humming.”

Helmrath says when he’s not at the office, he watches all of the TGL matches and rewatches the Atlanta Drive ones looking for any edge he can find. (Atlanta is 2-1 so far in 2026, and its next start is Feb. 23 against Boston Common Golf with the winner taking over first place in the standings.) He studies stats to help the team prepare and will send out a report ahead of matches explaining the gameplan, typically mapping out both aggressive and safe strategies for each hole that will be used based on the match situation and how players are feeling with certain clubs. Often, he identifies specific shots that players will need to hit during the match, so they can prepare properly.

On match days, Helmrath gets to SoFi Center early to check out pin placements, roll putts and get a sense for how much of a role grain will play on chip shots around the green—a
crucial detail given how differently into the grain and downgrain shots react indoors. And then there’s the team’s strategy when it comes to throwing the hammer, a TGL creation in which a team tosses out an orange flag during a hole it has an advantage on to increase how much a hole is worth. An opponent declining the hammer forfeits the hole. Helmrath studied how other teams reacted to this tool and used it as both a scoring weapon and a way to rattle opponents.

It certainly worked as Atlanta won more than twice as many points via the hammer than any other team during the inaugural season. One of three timely hammers, thrown on the 14th hole of Match 2 in a best-of-three final against New York, flipped Atlanta into the lead when Horschel drained a dramatic birdie putt. Shortly after that, Helmrath got a big hug from Blank and partied late into the night with the team.

But unlike the players, Helmrath had to give a PGA Tour Superstore company town hall presentation the next morning. “Unfortunately, I was on a 6 a.m. flight, but it was a blast getting to live in that moment,” Helmrath said, “and it’s something I’ll definitely cherish forever.” With TGL’s second season underway, the work isn’t over. After seeing Atlanta’s statistical advantage pay off, Helmrath expects other teams to adopt similar strategies.

“We definitely know there’s a target on our back, so we might have to do a little zigging while others tried to figure out how we zagged last year,” Helmrath says with a grin. “We’re super excited for another season, and I hope more than anything that we can bring another title back to Atlanta.”

Maybe this time, he’ll even get to sleep in after.