Golf Broadcast: Tech Innovations for Enhanced Viewing Experience

Golf broadcasts use advanced tech like shot tracers, radar, and drones to enhance the viewing experience for fans.

### The Mind-Blowing Tech Behind Watching Golf on TV
* 📺  Golf broadcasts utilize TrackMan technology, featuring cameras, radars, and wireless transmitters around the course to **precisely measure and project shot shapes in real time**.
* 🌐  The PGA Tour website's real-time play-by-play portal employs on-fairway cameras and volunteers with **laser rangefinders and tablets** to quickly update **shot locations**.
* 📱  Volunteers with Samsung phones use their fingerprints to **close betting windows** for online gambling on **specific shots**.
* 🚁  The Vision Pro app offers a **futuristic way to watch golf**, with an **overhead view of any hole on the course** created from drone footage.
* 🏆  The broadcast plays a crucial role in showcasing the sport, with the evolving technology making it **more engaging and accessible to viewers**.
* 🏌️‍♂️  The PGA Tour faces a **massive logistical challenge** setting up the **advanced tech** at different locations for each tournament.
* 🏆  The ultimate goal of the tech is to **put on a great show for viewers** and allow golfers to compete for **prestigious prizes like the FedEx Cup**.

(bouncy upbeat music) So every sport has some sort of tech involved in the show somewhere now, right? Like tennis has the famous replay in or out graphic. American football has the digital line of scrimmage we all know. And football, football has this sweet new offsides graphic and golf has this, the shot tracer. So some of you who've been subscribed for a long time already know this, but many of you also don't. I am a golfer. I've been golfing for a long time. Longer than I've been doing like anything else. My first ever YouTube upload, before any other tech videos, was a couple of golf videos, believe it or not. - [Speaker] Come back, nice ball, good drive. - But I do still watch golf all the time. And of course, after doing that Formula 1 video, my brain is in tech in sports mode and I'm realizing the amount

of technology hidden in
plain sight on a golf course that makes a broadcast possible, is actually insane. There's cameras, there's
also lasers, there's radar, LiDAR, optical fiber cables, there's volunteers carrying Samsung phones with a custom app installed on them. There's so much happening here. But why? And when you think about it,
there's really one good reason for all this stuff going on, which is golf is hard to watch, for a lot of the same reasons that Formula 1 is hard to watch. Like this sport, it's not just like, it's not one basketball court, where all the action is
happening in the same place at the same time. It's 18 different courts,
all spread around, hundreds of yards away from each other, all with different action
happening on them at the same time with a tiny little white
ball flying through the air that's impossible to see. So when you're not physically
at the golf course,

there's basically three
ways to watch golf, each requiring more
technology than the last. There's the TV broadcast,
there's the website portal, and then there's the Vision Pro. (upbeat music) So the TV broadcast, it's
the most simple, right? But there's still this flagship problem of the golf ball being tiny and basically invisible
as soon as it gets hit. And so that problem was
solved with the shot tracer. Now a lot of people don't
actually know how this gets made. Like it's not a computer drawing a trace of where it kind of sees
the golf ball going. It's not an AI prediction of anything. It's actually very precisely
measured accurately. So if you've ever been
around a golf course or looking at a broadcast
during a tournament, you'll notice there are a ton of these, these little towers here. Well, they're not so little
towers sometimes too. But these towers are strategically placed

all the way around the golf
course, behind the tee boxes, around the fairways, and behind the greens,
so that they're covering the entire golf course. And every single one of these
towers has three things: a camera, a TrackMan, and
a wireless transmitter. So this TrackMan right here,
this is the special thing. This is the radar system used to measure the exact
launch speed and angle and spin rates of the golf ball the instant it's contacted by a golf club. And then here's the thing: once that gets measured, instantly the computers
know everything about how that golf ball is going
to fly through the air, as soon as it touch the ball, how high it'll go, how far
it'll go, how much it'll turn. And all of that will be even
more useful in the next level. But for this TV broadcast,
from the launch data, they can immediately
project a shot shape line.

overlaid onto the hole using
the angle from the fixed camera that's sitting right behind the tee box, and immediately get that data
back to the broadcast trucks. Now the crazy part is, if you look around enough, you will see these things
all over the golf course. They're hidden in plain sight, basically. Some of them are right next
to the golfers at the tee box. Some of 'em are actually
strapped up to TV towers. And it's not just the tee boxes. The TrackMan launch monitors
actually face backwards from behind the green too, so they can pick up launch
data from all kinds of shots, shots from the fairway. It's super impressive. And then all of these towers
that I got to check out, turns out they're all
completely battery powered and can last for an entire
day of a tournament. And then also this skirt around the bottom is actually covered in solar panels too. So they're basically
feeding into themselves.

and they never run out
of power during the day. All of this is to just
give us the shot tracer that makes golf on TV
dramatically easier to watch. (upbeat music) Now, sometimes, you can't
always watch golf on TV. You know, maybe you're at work, or maybe you're somewhere else
where you can't be in front of a TV, but you got another tab open just so you can keep an eye
on the PGA Tour website, so you can see what's happening. Lucky for you, they have
built this thing out. So, the website now has
this entire real-time play-by-play portal where you
can jump around to any hole and see exactly what's
happening when it happens. And then when the tournament is happening, every shot is updated in real time. But what I didn't realize
until seeing it in person is just how far they go to
deliver all of these shots as soon as possible.

So check this out. So there's a few more pieces of tech on the golf course
that you should know about. First of all, there are
these on fairway cameras covering the whole course. And basically they're like that tower that I showed you on the tee box earlier, but it doesn't need any TrackMan on it. It's just cameras, and
they're pointed everywhere. And then there are also volunteers stationed alongside every hole with laser range finders and tablets. So they've got this nice
little setup to be able to quickly tag a ball as soon as it lands and then upload its exact location. So here's how it all works. Ready? So a golfer's up on the tee box, they're about to hit their first shot. You've loaded up the website. Remember how I said those radar
trackers can compute exactly what the ball is going to do the second the club impacts the ball? Well, okay, perfect, so
that data is shot over

to the Shotlink trailer in the parking lot, where they have the feeds
from all the cameras all over the golf course. And this is the crazy part. The second the shot gets hit, that system is already projecting
a polygon on the course where it thinks the
ball is going to end up. You can actually see it right
here, outlined in yellow. Then a few seconds later,
boom, the ball lands and rolls right into that box. It's so sick. So then, the volunteer with the laser and the tablet will laser the ball and get its exact location,
just to confirm that, upload it, boom, it immediately shows up on the Tour website. Literally within three seconds
of the ball coming to rest, it is updated. It's pretty impressive. And the craziest part to me
was seeing this system at work, like predicting where the
ball is going to land. Again, before it even lands,
as soon as they hit the ball.

it is accounting for obviously
the launch angle, the spin, the speed, but also things
like the wind, the temperature, the humidity, your elevation, and all of that stuff
to give you that polygon for probability for where the
ball's probably gonna end up. Now, obviously it won't be perfect, especially if the ball
does something unexpected, like hits a tree or a bird or something. But that's why you have the
volunteer down on the course with the laser just to finalize
everything and hit submit. And they told me it
actually calibrates itself over time, this system. So every 10 shots, it dials in even more, and I actually saw that
happen in real time. I watched more shots during
the course of the day. Some of the earlier shots
would be just slightly off, and then some of the shots
later in the day would be fixed, and they'd be nearly perfect. And then there's actually one more piece

of tech out there on the golf course that I haven't even mentioned yet, and that is following every
single group of golfers as they're playing in the tournament. You'll be able to spot one
person holding a phone. And at this tournament, the travelers, they were pretty easy to find 'cause they were all wearing pink shirts. So what are they doing
exactly, you might be asking. Well, I got my hands on
exactly what they're doing. Turns out, every single one of them is holding the same phone. It's a Samsung Galaxy XCover6, a pretty ruggedized phone,
which makes sense for outdoors. But what they're doing is
keeping official scores for the online scorecard, and their fingerprint is in charge of closing the betting windows for people who are online
gambling, basically in real time on specific shots. So they literally hold their
fingerprint down on this screen until the moment a player
starts their backswing.

Then they release it to
close the betting window. Here you can see them doing exactly that. Wait for the player to
hit, wait patiently, and then there it goes. The shot gets hit, and then whoever's betting
on that specific shot, whether it's hitting the
fairway or hitting the green or whatever, that's the
moment it's locked in. (upbeat music) So you remember when the
Vision Pro first came out and there were all those mock
ups of all these cool apps and experiences that
people wanted to happen? I talked about how the ideas
for the apps were ahead of the apps themselves. One of 'em was Formula 1. Somebody built this whole
dream F1 watching setup with the broadcast up top
and then this little mini map of the cars on the track down below. It looked so sick, but it
turns out that wasn't real. It was just a mock up that
no one had actually made yet.

except for the PGA Tour, it turns out, because the PGA Tour's
Apple Vision Pro app. It's insane. It's the same
idea, and it actually works. So they've got the leaderboard up top, a broadcast feed, and some
other things if you want. But then at the bottom, in real time, you can have a mini map
of any hole on the course with an extremely accurate map of the hole that's stitched together from, yes, an entire team of drones
that fly over the course and map it out a couple of
days before the tournament. All right, so once they've got all the drone footage imported
and stitched it all together, this is the result. So this is literally on their computer, but this is a flyover of,
this is the 10th hole, 456-yard par four, and right away you can
see tons of details. There's all the other
houses on the property, there's all the obvious
things, like the tee boxes.

and the fairway. But you see every single tree, there's the iconic tree in
the middle of the fairway. You keep going, you can see the cart path, you can see where the
hole is on the green. You can see even things like the TV tower, and you flip it around, you
can see where the stands are. I'm behind a tree, you can see everything. So this is as close of
representation of that hole as you can possibly get for all 18 holes. And since it's so detailed,
you can look at the green and see how tilted it is. This is a pretty flat green,
so there's not a whole lot of elevation change, but
they've got these little, I mean this looks like
2K, you can see the little rolling meters for where it rolls off. It's extremely accurate. So 18 of those. So yeah, as this tournament
is actually happening, this is what it looks like.

It's basically a combination of all the technologies we've seen through this whole experience, level one, two, and now three. You see the broadcast in all its glory. You see the scoreboard getting updated in real time, and then you have this full overhead view of any hole on the course that you can actually look around and watch the shot flying through the air. And these are the actual shot shapes. Like if a player hits a low shot, it will be a low shot in this visual. If they hit a draw or a fade or a high shot, it shows all of that too, because the launch monitor knows all of this stuff. So this feels like a really futuristic way to watch golf. I thought it was super cool. Now, again, similar to Formula 1, they're at a new location every single week for every new tournament. So it is a massive logistical challenge to put all of this stuff onto the course and get it all together.

Matter of fact, just seeing everything they have to bring in from the dozens of trailers to the 10 to 20 miles of fiber, running all over the golf course, to the drone footage, mapping out every hole, and of course, the grandstands and the scoreboards and the TrackMan towers and the TV towers all over the golf course. Like they can't do this for every single tournament, but they do try for as many of the larger, high profile events as possible. So it was sick to watch this event in person and then go back and see how golfers hit certain shots and how it looks on the broadcast and then in the Vision Pro and just to get to see how it's represented for people who aren't there. Because for every sport, the broadcast is so important. It's really only 1% or less of the people actually watching are the ones there in person. But basically for everyone else,

they get to know the sport
through the broadcast, through the media, and that's what's so cool about it. And that's always evolving over time. I dunno if you remember,
maybe 30 years ago, the NHL tried something
interesting with a glowing puck. This was like the mid-90s. They tried to make it easier for people to watch the broadcast and
follow the puck around. It was well intentioned, but obviously pretty tough execution, even though it's still kind
of cool for 30 years ago. Nowadays, the tech is so refined and so precise that you can track a tiny white ball through the air over three football fields at a time within a couple yards of margin of error. And it is definitely an improvement. All this, of course,
at the end of the day, is to put on a great show, make a great followable broadcast, and for the golfers to go out and compete and to try to win the tournament.

and at the end of the
season, to try to win this, the FedEx Cup, the precious
end of the year prize. And I touched it, I touched
the FedEx Cup. Pretty sick. So yeah, shout out again to the PGA Tour for making this video possible,
for pulling back the rope, and letting us see the behind-the-scenes. Nobody gets to see this
stuff, but now you have. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace.
(upbeat music)

Golf Tech is Hidden in Plain Sight!

Marques Brownlee

The Impact of Technology on Golf Broadcasting

Golf broadcasting relies heavily on technology such as cameras, lasers, radar, and LiDAR to make the game easier to watch.

The use of shot tracers has been crucial in solving the problem of the tiny and hard-to-see golf ball during TV broadcasts.

The technology involved in golf broadcasting has evolved to provide viewers with a better and more immersive watching experience, using TV broadcasts, website portals, and the Vision Pro.

The Advanced Technology Behind Golf Broadcasting

Towers equipped with cameras and TrackMan radar systems are strategically placed around the golf course to capture and analyze the trajectory of the ball in real time.

These high-tech monitors not only provide data for TV shot shapes but also power the real-time play-by-play portal on the PGA Tour website.

The towers are battery-powered and equipped with solar panels, ensuring uninterrupted coverage throughout the day.

Cameras on the golf course provide full coverage and, combined with laser range finders and tablets, allow for quickly tracking and uploading the exact location of the ball.

The system uses radar trackers to predict the ball's path before it lands, taking into account various factors like wind and temperature.

It calibrates itself over time to improve the accuracy of its predictions.

The Use of Technology in Golf Tournaments

A group of golf tournament travelers are using Samsung Galaxy XCover6 phones to keep official scores for the online scorecard and to manage online betting in real time.

The PGA Tour has developed an Apple Vision Pro app that provides a live leaderboard, broadcast feed, and a real-time mini map of any hole on the golf course, created from drone footage stitched together for a detailed view of the course.

This technology allows for advanced tracking and an enhanced viewing experience for golf fans.

The Vision Pro technology provides a detailed and accurate overhead view of each hole, allowing viewers to see the entire course and the players' shots in real time.

The broadcast includes the real-time updating of scoreboards and offers a futuristic way of watching golf with the representation of different shot shapes.

The technology presents a massive logistical challenge but is brought in for many larger and high-profile events to enhance the viewing experience for the audience.

The NHL's attempt to use a glowing puck in the mid-90s was a well-intentioned effort to make the broadcast more viewer-friendly.

However, modern technology now allows for precise tracking of the ball in sports like golf, greatly improving the viewing experience.

The ultimate goal of these broadcasting innovations is to create an engaging show for the audience and to showcase the competition, as seen in the behind-the-scenes footage provided by the PGA Tour.