As TGL’s inaugural season approaches its playoffs, the focus has seemingly shifted to the on-field (and on-screen) competition and the postseason push.

That’s not always been the case. Understandably with a new product, in early weeks of the season there have been questions, concerns and misconceptions about the technology – not only the performance of the system being used by TGL but the motivations behind it, both financial and promotional.

The screen golf component of TGL – which involves PGA Tour players hitting into a massive IMAX-sized screen from as far as 35 yards away – is a sophisticated technology stack that is far more complex than a standard golf simulator. It’s a one-of-one system with multiple layers of redundancy and thousands of hours of testing.

“It gives these best players in the world confidence once they get used to it,” Andrew Macaulay, TGL’s Chief Technology Officer, says of the simulator set-up at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, a South Florida setting not far from where many of the tour’s top players live. “I’ve seen them bring their own launch monitors, which they hit all the time wherever they go. They put them down, and after eight or nine shots, they’re like, ‘Yep, okay.’ They put theirs away, and now they trust the system. Ultimately, that was the biggest test for me.”

Yet there are perceptions, fueled in part by misleading or ill-informed stories and social media posts, that TGL’s technology is driven by a single launch monitor.

In actuality, the infrastructure is a carefully orchestrated combination of multiple tracking systems. This includes four Toptracer tracking systems (comprising eight optical cameras that work in pairs) along with 18 Full Swing KIT radar launch monitors that are spread out between the front hitting boxes, the back hitting boxes, and the area closer to the screen known informally as “the pit.”

Layered Technology

It’s a “layered technology” approach that Macaulay, TGL and the involved companies spent the past several years working on to create a super-sized version of an indoor simulator.

“We like to call it stadium golf,” says Macaulay. “We wanted to be able to play the ball from multiple different lies — whether that’s the fairway, the sand, the rough, and depending on how you drop it. It could be a nice lie in the rough. It could be a buried lie in the rough where you could hardly see the ball. So, that eliminated all the products where you have to just place the ball in this perfect little square for it to be read (by the monitor).”

Toptracer cameras monitor the three-dimensional space between the tee box and the screen to track the ball and then provide data on the location it would have carried to if the screen wasn’t there to stop it. That information passes to Full Swing’s system, which is a customized version of the company’s simulator game software. Based on the angle that ball is coming in – speed, spin, the surface it hits – the software determines the physics of how the ball would react, with obvious differences between fairways and greens and slopes. Among the club and ball data points tracked by Full Swing are spin rate, face angle, attack angle, launch angle, ball speed, club speed, and more.

Technology Questions

It’s natural there would be questions about the technology involved given that Full Swing is not only the official licensed simulator of the PGA Tour, but the company is partnered with Tiger Woods, one of TGL’s co-founders. One question that’s been voiced in some corners is whether the doppler radar technology utilized by Full Swing can consistently and accurately gauge spin numbers as well as competitors.

“The fact that it’s kind of a combination of two technologies is a kind of obvious rebuttal to, this was a partnership play, or this was a vested interest,” said Roberto Castro, a former PGA Tour pro who has been integral to testing TGL’s tech as the Managing Director at CapTech Consulting. “That collaboration that was in the interest of the best product and the best technology.”

There have also been understandable questions from TGL participants about the technology, but Castro jokes that these discerning critics would rather test its accuracy themselves than get too in the weeds with what he calls the “TLDR” (or too-long-didn’t-read) explanation of the simulator system.

“Justin Thomas came in for that first test session at SoFi Center, warmed up with a few little wedges,” said Castro. “He hit a dead straight 7-iron that went 10 feet from the hole in going right for it. His second shot was this big peeling cut that curved five yards before it ever hit the screen. He finished with kind of a windmill finish. The ball hit the screen, and then it kept cutting. It was a beautiful fade onto the right side of the green. And he turned around with a smile on his face and shrugged his shoulders and was like, ‘Wow, that’s what I wanted to see. could I create the shots I thought I could?’ Some guys just want to see the curve, and they’re off to the races. That’s all they need to know.”

That doesn’t mean there aren’t any issues.

Invalid Reading

Most notably, Tommy Fleetwood hit an approach shot from 168 yards out earlier this month in a match between his Los Angeles Golf Club and Boston Common that registered as 39 yards. The shot was ruled as an invalid reading and Fleetwood got a “mulligan,” for all intents and purposes.

What happened, said Macaulay, is that Toptracer was scanning the three-dimensional space in front of the screen and incorrectly picked up “the beautiful divot that Tommy hit” instead of the ball. It’s not something that would happen in a traditional simulator where players are hitting off artificial turf, but the divot is a byproduct of the realism TGL has added with real grass and real sand in the various boxes that players hit from.

“There’s tons of code and an algorithm in there that makes the right decision. Unfortunately, we found a case where it made the wrong one,” said Macaulay. “That’s good information. That’s good data. We’ve obviously now taken that case in and gone, ‘Alright, well, how did it miss that?’ We’re adjusting for that. It doesn’t mean something couldn’t happen again, but every time we get one of these and we correct it, it just makes it even less likely that that’s going to happen again.”

Additionally, several players seemingly hit wedge shots well past their intended target early in the season. The league’s most recent blunder, however, was user-error.

Woods last week in a match between his Jupiter Links team and New York Golf Club hit a 56-degree wedge the exact 99 yards he thought he needed. Unfortunately, the distance on the approach shot was 199 yards and Woods misheard the yardage, later calling it one of the “most embarrassing things to ever happen” to him during a competition.

TGL’s Tech Tweaks

Other tweaks have been made to TGL’s tech stack that most viewers wouldn’t be aware of. One of the most significant alterations, made possible by the league’s one-year delay, was that the system can also determine (and account for) the specific make and model of ball being hit and add it to the equation.

“That means that the full swing radars were trained to identify the radar signature of the (Titleist) Pro V1x versus the TaylorMade TP5 or whatever,” said Macaulay. “And we Toptrace the aerodynamic properties of that specific make and model and use that in extrapolating where the ball went if the screen wasn’t there to hit it. Different balls fly differently by design. I’m not aware of any other sims or products out there that go to that level of detail.”

The creation of TGL’s comprehensive system required a unique collaboration between different technology providers, an effort Macaulay describes as “a bunch of engineers doing what they do best, which is solve complicated problems in really good ways.”

What they’ve produced isn’t without growing pains, and it will likely continue to have its share of detractors. And yet it’s yielded something unique in the golf world, including an entirely new way to experience the game.