Live from the U.S. Open: Tracer Tech, Towercam Show Fox Sports Commitment to Innovation By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Sunday, June 16, 2019 - 2:11 am
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Since Fox Sports had its first U.S. Open five years ago the team has consistently been looking to push the boundaries of broadcast technologies. Part of that is a love of tech and a drive to really tell the story of a golf event in new ways. But part of it is also because Zac Fields, Fox Sports, SVP of graphic tech and innovation, is a big golf fan who spends plenty of time watching golf coverage from around the world.
Zac Fields says one of the things the team takes pride in is a commitment to tracing golf shots using a combination of Toptracer, Trackman, and Virtual Eye.
We are stewards of this event and we want to show it through the best possible window, says Mike Davies, Fox Sports, SVP, technical and field operations. And with someone like Zac who is a rabid golf fan we have the perfect marriage of someone who can see whether something is a worthwhile technology from the golf fan's point of views.
Fields says he and the team are quite happy to go into an event knowing that some of that innovation will involve testing during out new things during the actual event.
Sometimes that is the only way you can achieve something that is really great, he says. If you're always going in with limitations, you're never going to know what you can really do.
The Towercam this year is a perfect example. At Chambers Bay five years ago, the team had two Towercam units that could extend a camera upwards to 17 feet.
They worked well but they were quite clunky and a big operation for what we achieved as they needed to be cabled and that limited how they could be used, says Fields. But this year we have one that can go up 33 feet for a higher vantage point and then at the top we have a Shotover gyrostabilized mount, so we have calibrated pan, tilt, and zoom. That allows us to get those dynamic shots with the trace and it's a great look that no one has ever done before.
Towercam on the 6th tee box at the U.S. Open.
And it wasn't until the Towercam was actually fired up and used that the production team saw its real potential. It's located behind the stands at the 6th tee box and can also cover play on the 14th tee and fairway which runs alongside the 6th hole.
The expectation was we would get a great reverse shot looking to 14 and also be able to use it on 6 but it turns out that the using it on 6 has been much better and impactful, says Fields. The Towercam moved to the 17th hole for Saturday's round.
Fields says one of the things the team takes pride in is a commitment to tracing golf shots using a combination of Toptracer, Trackman, and Virtual Eye. The three companies work together as one unit as Toptracer, and Trackman accumulate data of the balls flight and then that data and the balls flight path is merged over the virtualized CG environment provided by Virtual Eye. The Toptracer and Trackman systems also power shot tracking over live video.
We see tracing as akin to the yellow line in football: you need it, he says. If you can't see the ball then you should have a trace and we do that more than anyone, whether its RF, on the tee box, or the slabs on nine holes. And now we have tracing on the practice range as we see a huge value to tracing and it is a necessity on the broadcast.
Adds Brad Cheney, Fox Sports, VP, field operations and engineering: The tracer really is the most important thing out there and the more of it you have, the more of it you want. And now we can bridge from the tracer in live video to AR and show people not only a 3D model of the hole but put them on the course. It's important for us and the game.
Fields says the conversations with technology partners are ongoing during the entire year as they collectively look to move tracking and other technologies forward.
Our first year we tried some of what we are doing now using a calibrated camera and it wasn't quite ready, he explains. But we were already talking about it for the next year as one thing we've done well is try new things, see what works, and then grow it the next year. It's a great collaboration between the technical and production team as I can get a text from [U.S. Open producer] Mark Loomis on Daytona 500 about something he saw and how it could apply to golf.
The AR and graphics components rely heavily on data and Cheney says Fox worked with SMT to customize versions of the USGA data set.
We're not only getting the normal data but also layering in all of our radar and tracking data and we'll be able to go back year after year and do a lot of interesting things, he says.
Fields also points to the realtime Foxbox that keeps viewers constantly updated on the leaderboard.
One of the hardest things in golf is telling the story in a linear fashion when everything is happening simultaneously, he says. With a leaderboard up there constantly, we don't want to reveal a score before the viewer sees it happen and by staying in sync with the video story it can be quite impactful. It takes a lot of communication between the operator and the team as the need to know what the next shots are going to be and if it is live or on tape.
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Live from the U.S. Open: Tracer Tech, Towercam Show Fox Sports Commitment to Innovation By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
