BEHIND THE SCENES: PGA Tour ShotLink (by: Sandbox8.com)
Posted September 21, 2009 by mygolfspy
Article by: Rob over at http://www.sandbox8.com/ . Today he brings you a rare look inside the Nike Golf Tour Van. Make sure you check Rob’s blog for other great stories and product reviews! You can also follow him on Twitter & Facebook.
BEHIND THE SCENES: PGA Tour ShotLink
If you have ever watched a PGA Tour event on TV, in person, or on your computer, you probably have wondered at some point, how are they able to get the precise distance a ball has traveled, how far it is away from the pin, or the statistics for number of putts Tiger Woods makes within 10 feet?
All that data comes from an army of 300-400 volunteers that follow the action on the golf course using survey grade lasers and handheld devices to record every move each player makes on the golf course and that data is sent in real-time to the PGA TOUR ShotLink truck.
During round one of the BMW Championship I was able to get a behind the scenes tour of the PGA TOUR ShotLink truck and learn about how ShotLink works and how they collect and gather the data, that you and I see at home.
Background on ShotLink
The first electronic scoreboard system was first introduced by the TOUR in 1983, but that system like those that followed over the years proved to be very inefficient and unreliable, relying on scorers to write down the data at the end of each hole by a greenside operator. This was so error prone and that it eventually lead to the creation of ShotLink in 1999. The vision of ShotLink is to “Turn Data into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into entertainment” according to a quote on the ShotLink website.
In 2008 CDW became the Official Technology Partner of the PGA TOUR with a five-year integrated marketing and business partnership. CDW powers ShotLink with state of the art technology and support both on and off the course. “This partnership is a unique opportunity to demonstrate how CDW helps organizations achieve their goals through specialized technology solutions,” said Mark Gambill, Chief Marketing Officer, CDW. “We look forward to leveraging our IT expertise and range of products and partners to help the PGA TOUR provide an enhanced experience for fans and improve TOUR operations.”
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September 22nd, 2009 at 2:15 am
Great video MGS, shotlink really adds so much more to PGA Tour footage! Although I’ve always wondered why players clubs do not have a wee sticker with an embedded chip just under the grip. This would let everyone know exactly what club they were playing and exact distance to the hole by just pointing the camera at it. It could also give a sort of Augmented Reality layer to the TV coverage letting viewers know the equipment the pros are playing and their exact specs. It would also provide an additional advertising stream which could reduce or even replace the normal Ad interruptions.
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:28 am
Interesting concept…but how would the sticker know the specs? Would this have to be encoded when before the sticker was put on.
September 22nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
It could be a sticker (like you get when your equipments checked at the Long Drive competitions) and have an tiny RFID chip (or similar tech) in it. Manufacturers would then load their players specs to the PGA before play commenced. Additional benefits would be that the PGA and players could easily check equipment and avoid 15 club Ian Woosnam and Jim Furyk incidents. The technology would be pretty simple to get working by most competent tech companies.
September 24th, 2009 at 5:52 am
How could a rfid chip replace advertising????? I guess i don’t understand that point at all….
September 24th, 2009 at 9:29 am
I’m a civil engineer who has studied surveying. They missed a “teachable moment” opportunity. Shotlink does all of this by making the calculations using, are you ready……..high school trigonometry. What the lasers are doing is measuriing is both the distance to the ball, as well as the precise angle away from a known baseline that the PGA shotlink team sets up in advance. That’s the laser instrument does this automatically when it takes it’s reading. That is why when they discussed the fairway laser, when he said that they could move it and replace it in exactly the same location and then “recalibrate” it, the recalibration must be the setting the angle back to the known location. The development of the laser as a way of measuring distances in these devices, about 20 years ago, was a huge change in the surveying industry. Used to have to do physical measurements using metal tapemeasures prior to that. Obviously that would have been impossible during a golf tournament.
Neat use of technology.