Introduction
TGL, presented by SoFi, is an innovative golf league set to launch in January 2025. It blends cutting-edge technology with team-based competitions featuring top PGA TOUR players in two-hour prime-time events each week.
For shots within 50 yards, players transition to the GreenZone, a specially designed 22,475-square-foot short game area. This unique space features a 41-yard-wide rotating turntable that alters approach angles and utilizes nearly 600 actuators to dynamically reshape the green’s topography between holes.
The Challenge
In order to create a seamless experience from game play in the ScreenZone to real world play in the GreenZone, a ball must first be placed on the physical green in precisely the same position it ended up in the game and then subsequently tracked with high accuracy until the hole is completed.
So how many pixels do you need to track a golf ball’s location to within less than an inch from 60 feet in the air? What if the ground rotates? What if the surface deforms in real time? What if you had to track that ball over an area the size of four basketball courts?
Systematic Consulting Group has the answer: 100 million pixels (actually 98,205,696 but who’s counting?)
The Process
Tracking a golf ball in this way might seem unconventional, but Systematic thrives on tackling unique challenges. In fact, we had previously solved a similar problem by programming drones to track golf balls soaring down fairways. While the cameras didn’t need to be airborne for this project, implementing a tracking solution in the TGL arena at the SoFi Center for a live TV broadcast introduced its own set of hurdles:
- Discrete camera placement: Cameras had to be positioned outside the view of broadcast cameras and angled steeply toward the target area.
- Dual-purpose tracking feeds: High-resolution tracking feeds had to not only be used to run tracking algorithms but also provide a live stream to the operator interface.
- Reliability under pressure: The entire system needed to be redundant and fault-tolerant to ensure uninterrupted operation during live events.
Systematic proposed the following solution:
- High-resolution camera setup: Four cameras (with backups), each capturing footage at three times the resolution of 4K, running at 30 frames per second.
- Real-time processing pipeline: Camera feeds are processed and encoded live by high-end NVIDIA GPUs
- Seamless view integration: Software capable of stitching all four oblique camera views into a single, comprehensive overhead view.
- Automatic failover: A fault-tolerant hardware and software solution designed to seamlessly and automatically re-route and re-stitch the remaining camera feeds, maintaining system functionality without manual intervention.
- User-friendly interface: A web-based operator interface allowing users to zoom, pan, and mark shot locations directly on the overhead display.
- AI-powered precision: Machine vision technology to assist operators in pinpointing ball positions with accuracy.
The Results
Systematic designed, procured, built, and programmed this advanced system entirely from the ground up. Final testing at the SoFi Center demonstrated the system’s exceptional accuracy, averaging less than an inch across the entire 22,475-square-foot short game area.
High-tech for golf? Absolutely. This is just one of the many cutting-edge hardware and software systems driving TGL that Systematic played a key role in designing and building. Keep an eye on our blog for exclusive technical insights you won’t find anywhere else!