PGA Championship Spotlight, Part 1: Video-Gamification of Golf's Final Major Changes How Viewers See the Sport Shot-tracer technology, live green animations, 4D replays enhance insight into the game By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Friday, August 10, 2018 - 10:45 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
Golf has a reputation for being very much set in its ways. It's a game romantically - at times, stubbornly - steeped in tradition, a sport not exactly known for living on the bleeding edge.
CBS Sports and Turner Sports' joint coverage of the PGA Championship - which continues through Sunday on TNT and CBS - has spent the past few years blowing those notions to smithereens.
Toptracer technology provides a real-time look at the path of a shot off the tee. For the first time, CBS and Turner are able to offer Toptracer on all 18 tees, as well as in selected circumstances on golfers' second shots off the fairway.
In fact, viewers of this weekend's tournament, the final major of the golf season, may feel that they're watching a new videogame more than an old sepia-toned film. Turner and CBS are rolling out a slew of technologies - live ball tracking, green mapping, even 360-camera rigs - designed to give the viewer insight they've never enjoyed before.
The approach may be surprising to the casual observer, but it's widely embraced by many who both cover and consume the sport.
This audience is a bit more progressive than we give them credit for, in terms of what they'll accept on screen, says Matt Kane, an associate producer for Turner Sports. He is overseeing much of the Thursday and Friday coverage, which airs on TNT; the action flips over to CBS air on Saturday and Sunday. I believe that, when you don't see many of these elements, it leaves you as a golf viewer wanting more. These things have become expected now, especially at a major championship.
So, as golf's best tackle the course at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, these innovations are blasting their way onto viewer screens:
Toptracer
Perhaps the most impactful technological development of the past few years on CBS Sports and Turner Sports' golf coverage has been the integration of Toptracer. 3D radar tracking enables the real-time graphic display of the true path of a ball.
Shown on screen as a red line, Toptracer allows the broadcaster to show flight direction, speed, the height apex, and even the curve of the shot. When used correctly, it's golf's version of the yellow 1st & and Ten line. It's at that level of importance to the viewing experience.
Says Kane, The Toptracer technology is a game-changer in the coverage of this sport, for sure.
Toptracer is not new (it was first used for the 2016 PGA Championship, at Baltusrol in Springfield, NJ) but is being deployed much more aggressively this year. In the past, the tracer was available only on the tee shot from selected holes. Now it's available on all 18 tee boxes and, with the addition of Toptracer RF, is available even on some second shots from the fairway. Two RF cameras roaming the course are outfitted with the Toptracer technology, allowing additional use of the onscreen enhancement.
Toptracer data is married with a 3D rendering of the hole to give viewers a live animation of a tee shot in-flight.
It's really exciting because, from my experience, that's what fans want to see, says Harold Bryant, executive producer/SVP, production, CBS Sports. It's a great tool that will help us make this an even more exciting event.
The broadcasters also leverage Toptracer data to create what is called the ARL Virtual Eye. During the event, golfers on their tee shots will be shown with a 3D map of the hole on the right side of a split screen. With the combination of the Toptracer data and a virtual flyover of the hole, viewers get a highly accurate real-time look at where a drive is headed along the fairway and when it eventually comes to rest.
Execs from both Turner and CBS note the importance of these kinds of storytelling tools in broadcasts from a course that many viewers may not be familiar with. Bellerive has not hosted a major championship since 1992.
The Tracer technology has become integral to [our storytelling process] in broadcasting the sport of golf, says Kane. We've fully embraced it, along with the animations we've added. Viewers are very familiar with seeing Augusta every year, but, when you have a course like Bellerive, I think a fair amount of our job initially is to educate the viewer on what the course is like and how it plays. All of our technology direction is going towards that mission.
Hawk-Eye Green Technology
Broadcast tech at this PGA Championship is also solving the mystery of the green. For many years, broadcasters have used different technologies, such as grids and moving arrows, to show what undulations a golfer faces when putting. Although there will still be plenty of that on this show, CBs and Turner are deploying Hawk-Eye for a new approach to putting.
Hawk-Eye technology allowing CBS and Turner to offer a new look at putting, displaying a path to success based on data on swing power and green layout.
Hawk-Eye is known for its game-changing work on official reviews in tennis and on goal-line technology in soccer. Now the Sony-owned tech developer is changing how viewers watch putts, not by outlining the hills and curves of the green but by offering a predicted path to success. A shaded area is sandwiched between the line of a hard, powerful putt to the back of the hole and a curved line for a softer, finesse putt. The idea is that, if a golfer's putt leaves that shaded area, the putt will be off target.
According to Bryant, the technology is available for use on four holes this year, and the front bench is likely to call on it w
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
PGA Championship Spotlight, Part 1: Video-Gamification of Golf's Final Major Changes How Viewers See the Sport Shot-tracer technology, live green animations, 4D replays enhance insight into the game By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
