When TGL presented by Sofi kicks off its second season next week, golfers on the New York Golf Club and Atlanta Drive will navigate 15 virtual golf holes in a made-for-TV match. Some holes will approximate what a regular golfer could find in Florida, winding around water and sand, or through the fall foliage straight out of a New England postcard or through the jagged rock and dramatic views set in Northern California.

But just after that, the TGL participants might be forced to play through an active volcano, shape a shot under a 250-foot menacing rock feature or blast their ball 40 yards past a par 3 set in a jungle, only for the ball to funnel all the way back to the hole.

In those moments, viewers can thank the wild mind of Agustin Pizá, the golf architect who has carved his own quirky lane at TGL by questioning everything and pushing the boundaries of what a TGL golf hole should be. Pizá’s designs are something out of a Golden Tee video game or a "Happy Gilmore"mini-golf hole, and they will be featured prominently in Season 2.

TGL has already announced two of Piza’s new designs for the second season – "Stinger" and "Cenote" – with more still to come. In a sleepy time in the golf calendar, both hole announcements drew significant buzz, heralded for their unconventional style.

How did Pizá cultivate that style? The architect sat down with PGATOUR.COM for a wide-ranging Q&A, discussing his background, his inspiration and what to expect from his hole designs in Season 2.

Note: This interview was lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

PGATOUR.COM: You’re known for almost all of the wild hole designs we’ve seen in TGL so far. Why did you decide to go that route versus traditional golf holes?

AGUSTIN PIZÁ: It's a story unfolding for the past 28 years of what I've done in my career, or what I thought that I would do. It was just always about creating that opportunity, and that opportunity came when I got the call from TMRW Sports and TGL to completely think outside the box.

During my regular career as a golf architect, you always have to think about the constraints, either being water constraints or landscape or whatever you have. There's always something that constrains you. You've probably heard, "Oh, it's a blank canvas." I never liked to use that phrase because it was never a blank canvas. You had to respect nature, you had to respect the constraints, you had to respect different approaches as a technical architect. So when TGL came around, it was actually a blank canvas. So this is when I was really like, "Oh wow, now we can think outside the box." Now I don't have to think about the irrigation heads. I don't have to think about sustainability. I don't have to think about anything. I could just be completely creative. My outside-of-the-box thinking nature was like, it exploded.

The only brief was, "Hey, design for the top players on TOUR and be creative." So that's when these holes started to appear in my mind. We're designing for the top players in the world. We're designing for match play/team play. So it was more of creating a space where, you know, why not have two fairways? One with a draw, one with a fade. Why not do this? Why not do that?

PGATOUR.COM: Talking to Gil Hanse, another TGL hole designer for Season 2, he mentioned it was harder for him to create holes because of that blank canvas, because now literally anything is possible. Has it been freeing for you or has it been hard to rein it in?

PIZÁ: That's a very interesting take. Gil Hanse is a fantastic architect, and he does the best expression there is with what he can work with. That's where the real magic comes. The real magic comes also with the constraints. Sometimes remodels are tougher than a completely new golf course because of that. I can relate to that. But with TGL, for me, it was, I can't say easy, but it wasn't difficult to imagine and fly and create and hallucinate and put golf in a different position than what we see now.

I like to think of myself as a critical thinker. We go back to the golden age of architecture, and I do ask myself: "Is that the maximum artistic expression of golf?" I don't think so. I'm like an alchemist. I'm still searching for the best artistic expression, or the better artistic expression, that I can find from golf. That is my quest during my career. I'm always a critical thinker. I'm thinking why and questioning myself, what I know, what I don't know. That takes me on these alternate routes and holes.

PGATOUR.COM: How does a hole start in your mind? Let’s take the “Spear,” for example. Talk through the process of that starting as an idea and becoming a TGL hole.

PIZÁ: I have a five-year degree in architecture. I'm in love with architecture, with creating vertical architecture, buildings. (Antoni) Gaudí is one of my favorite architects. So right there, you see that there are few things normal in what I do anyway. Let's take Le Corbusier and that movement of “less is more.” What you're looking at is how can we create a very great feature of, let's say, risk and reward with a minimalist approach? Architecture is playing with forms. We grab different forms, in this case, geometrical forms, and we started playing around with them. And when we pinch the two triangles together, the simplicity of that heroic shot, pinching at 300 yards, depending again on the tee, pinching right there in the middle at 12, 15 yards in width, and then opening up very graciously to 120 yards to create a cone. That was, to me, the maximum of minimalistic expression for a risk and reward for a heroic hole. It's just a pinch in the middle. Keep it simple. Two triangles. You go for it, or you don't.

I have all my TGL holes in sketch paper. All of them. I do everything by hand. Obviously, I'm old school. I do very little on my iPad. And from there, I have my team create the AutoCAD or a different level of perspective of it in 3D with all of my notes.

It's kind of like writing a song. You know how you want to enter. You know where the bridge is. You know what you want to create here. You want to know how it's going to sound. You know the rhythm. You know the melody. Now it's the composition, and the process is pretty interesting.

PGATOUR.COM: In Season 1, you’re playing a lot with horizontal direction (left, right, center) and the strategy of it, whether that’s “Flex” or “Pick Yer Plunder.” From what we’ve seen from your Season 2 designs, you’re playing more with verticality. Was that a conscious choice?

PIZÁ: That's a beautiful question. Yes, this season I wanted to play with verticality. There's going to be even a few other holes that are going to be released during the season, where you have now risk and reward on verticality, not necessarily on the horizontal plane. The first season, yes, there's a lot of horizontal movement. There's a lot of left and right. There's a lot of Xs and Ys. Now we're playing with the Z-value. We're playing with Zed. Now, maybe it's a straight shot, but you really have to carry over that or you'll get a negative speed slot. It's backwards like "Chutes and Ladders."

PGATOUR.COM: Let's talk a little bit about both of the new holes. Stinger, first. How did that hole come about?

PIZÁ: When I heard about (TGL) and had this opportunity, one of the first things that I wrote down in my notebook was, "Let's create an ode to Tiger Woods." I didn't know what it was. I just wanted one of our holes to be something special to give back, like, "Hey, you know, this is yours. This is for you. You made it a signature shot." We've seen it, we've lived it. We have a lot of great memories about it. So why not grab it? And then, when I really started to think, what's it going to be? Obviously, he has a lot of shots … He's given us so much that I wanted to give back in what I could do, what's in my power to do. So that's when it was like, let's go for the stinger. Let's see if we can create something special where I can justify the stinger on VR, on the screen. So that was a little bit of a creative process. OK, let's create this arc right here. Let's create this top part right here so you can hit the stinger, anything below 50 feet for the apex. Let's ask for those shots.

That's the other thing, I wanted to create something where you actually asked for one shot. With the team, we also pared back. OK, what’s the alternate? Let's ask for another shot. And that's the strong, high-trajectory draw. But if you see the plan, the hole doglegs and is moving away from you. So you also have to really work it to get that alternate shot in. The No. 1 shot is the stinger at around 270 yards, and you get a boost so you can get home in two. It’s a short par 4, but it’s a fun one.

What we wanted to create, No. 1, was an ode to Tiger Woods. We love to see him hit the shot. It's just going to be a complete honor for me to see, and for my team, to see him hit that. Hopefully, the crowd loves it.

PGATOUR.COM: And the second new hole, "Cenote." It’s a par 3, but you might have people hitting drivers by design. Can you explain that?

PIZÁ: I like to question everything. Why can't we play a hole from back to front? If we have a par 3 that was designed specifically for great long iron players, how can we now design something for just the long player, but it’s not going to be a freebie?

You can see on the drawings, the (green) is a tough target at 245 yards. Depending on the pin, depending on the tee, it can get longer or shorter. So that's made for the precise long-iron player. But then, just to have fun, let's create this cape behind it. So if you're not a precise long-iron player, but you have a very good 3-wood or you have a very good driver, and you want to hit over it, that cape will catch you like a backboard, grab your ball, funnel it and bring it back onto the green.

I think it's going to be fun. I would love to see it in real life, but for now, we're going to have it in digital. The idea is for everybody to have a lot of fun, to bring on some laughs, to bring on some wows. If that's the case, that's beautiful. We have enough regular golf holes out there to play TGL. Why not let your hair loose, and let's mix up. I think between the architects, I think we have a great plethora of holes, where we can mix and match and do it as serious as we want, but also as – and I don't mean that ours are not serious, they're dead serious – but they're a little bit more fantasious, a little bit more outside the box thinking, maybe. We can create a composition between all of us of different holes that we can find a very nice entertainment value amongst all of us.

PGATOUR.COM: Did the Season 1 holes play out the way that you expected them to? Or did you have to make tweaks to fit more of what your intention was initially?

PIZÁ: I was very lucky because, yes, they played out the way that (we intended). I saw a few highlights, and it was fun. It was just absolutely fun watching these top players think, analyze, take a look at the alternate ways of playing it. I really, really loved it.

Having said that, even though they played to the way that we designed it, with all the data that we have, why wouldn't we go back and analyze this? Like on “Spear,” the pinch is a beautiful shot. Everybody gets nervous. It's exciting. You see the ball flying, and you really don't know because of the depth perception where it's going to land. But the second shot, with the spear coming in because of geometrical ways and design, that's where we tweaked that front portion. Now we inverted another triangle coming back in. So you have to choose right or left on that second shot if you went conservative. So that’s what we did. We added value to the second shot before we actually hit the green. Now you're going to have to really study where the pin position is on that new green.

One thing that we created that we'd never seen before – and it seems like it didn't exist – are the negative speed slots. When you're playing these holes, you're gonna find more negative speed slots, where if you don't hit the precise driver, the ball can trickle all the way down or all the way to the left and give you a tougher option in.

One very important criteria when we were designing, because there's a lot of designs in the cut room, was: Would I become a member? Would I love to play this hole over and over again? If we had 18 holes of a Pizá Golf TGL, would I love to play them in real life? The ones that got a yes were the ones that we turned into TGL. We have a cut room in Pizá Golf's design studio, of I don't know how many, but the ones that you see are the ones that we asked ourselves, would we play them over and over and would have fun doing it.