Golf suffered from a reduced audience during the years of the pandemic. Attendance is now increasing at live events. The PGA Tour hopes to continue growing with a new augmented reality project with Quintar.

The PGA Tour is modernizing the golf experience. You’re leveraging the latest in technology to create the most interactive experiences your viewers have ever seen. Conditions on the course are turning to the new normal. The Tour knows that it needs to increase the immersion of the attendees. This will keep the momentum in that trend.

In that sense, the PGA partnered with Quintar. The company is a leader in augmented reality (AR) for sports entertainment. The partnership will bring AR as a display enhancement on mobile devices for attendees of live events. The Tour will offer a mobile app through the Apple App Store (so iOS only for now). Placing a phone horizontally with the app open activates AR mode. The app provides additional interactions with the course, providing enhanced insights and statistics.

Sophisticated telemetry for an immersive experience

Scott Gutterman, Senior Vice President of Digital Operations for the PGA Tour, says, “The PGA TOUR is pleased to expand our relationship with Quintar with the goal of creating a more immersive and engaging tournament experience for fans. We have seen positive interaction and growth with our previous Quintar AR engagements and look forward to building on the momentum.”

The technology that powers this AR experience is Q.reality, a live sports and entertainment platform. The app can only be used by those attending specific PGA Tour events. The data for the app is provided by ShotLink, which is in turn provided by CDW. ShotLink is an infrastructure system installed on many golf courses that provides telemetry in three dimensions. It does this through multiple lasers placed on golf holes that track shots in three dimensions. Radar on some holes provides additional data such as swing speeds, ball speeds, and spin speeds.

The application will provide real-time information on each player’s shot during tournament competition. It will also have social aspects. Fan-targeted tools will allow the group to curate player replays. AR will apply overlays that indicate tee shot runs and trajectory, ball speed at apex, scoring, distances and other vital stats. Users can then combine them with images and share them with friends via social media.

The organization is focusing its efforts on live event experiences and hopes that this improvement will encourage more people to return to the links. This should enhance the overall experience of attending a PGA Tour event in person. Video game fans, however, will still have to wait their turn to experience their own augmented reality of PGA events.