PDA

View Full Version : Sure like that "golf tracker red line" when watching a golf tourney on TV.



aurorasooner
3/19/2015, 05:24 PM
I guess it uses some kind of Doppler radar to follow the flight of the golf ball from the tee and then super imposes some sort of "flight-line" red line on the TV picture.
One of the meh moments when watching pro golf tourneys is when you don't have any idea for the several seconds of golf ball flight while watching some camera follow the golf ball on a background of blue sky, if it's a good shot or not until the ball plops down in the fairway or on the green, or even how good these guys are when playing a cut-down low shot to a green into the wind with plenty of spin.
I would think the TV networks would be all over this technology on every hole and every shot but I only see it on a couple of holes per tourney. I don't know though how expensive the technology is, how bulky/cumbersome the electronics package is, how difficult it is to set up and integrate with the picture (is a fixed location a requirement for this or not,etc), or even how safe it is, health-wise, for the players/spectators. You certainly wouldn't want to come home from a televised pro tourney with a microwave sunburn or the cell-phone brain fry.
It'll be interesting to see if networks who are all-in with golf, NBC/Golf Channel and to a lesser extent CBS will expand this technology and if the golf ball manufacturers can come up with some kind of golf-ball coating treatment or perhaps a nano chip-tracking device in the golf ball core, that could make this technology more portable/less expensive/easier to use/ w/o causing any golf ball flight irregularities.
Sure hope their only solutions are not lime-green or hot-pink in color and I don't put much hope that any of the networks will even pursue it further when that old technology of measuring a 10 yard 1st down in pro and CFB is still done with the archaic 10 yard "chain-method". Of course, we'd still be 3 and out whatever measuring method was used.