The PGA Tour returns this week at Colonial Country Club, and they're using the Charles Schwab Challenge as an opportunity to re-introduce golf fans to their latest innovation.
TourCast made its debut during The Players Championship -- for one round, at least -- but there wasn't time to showcase what the platform can do. Now it can.
Available on every device platform, including in the PGA Tour app and through the Web, TourCast represents an evolution in how PGA Tour events are presented digitally, marking an upgrade from the days of two-dimensional shot trails, "unknown" spots on the golf course and a more limited selection of highlights for players not on TV coverage.
With TourCast, fans will get a three-dimensional view of every inch of a PGA Tour host course, showing three-dimensional shot trails for players based on launch monitor-driven radar data from the ShotLink system. The tool will allow fans to check out the distances to various landmarks on the course, including front and back yardages for shots to the green.
Fans can overlay the performance of players in each group on the hole, and they can see how a player historically performs on each hole they play, all in real time. There will be multiple views available on each hole, and strokes-gained data for the tournament and season will be updated after each shot.
As players hit shots, fans will be able to watch AI-driven videos that will paint a true picture of a round. If a camera captures a player's shot, it will be available as a highlight. That doesn't go as far (yet) as Every Shot Live intended to go at The Players, but it's a medium-term bridge to getting almost every shot available through TourCast in a few years.
If you want a sense of what this will look like before, the Tour has created a version of this for Rickie Fowler's final round of the 2015 Players.
