TOURCAST, ShotLink Pro to provide complete coverage across two courses for first time at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am
3 Min Read
Written by Staff
For players and fans alike, every shot matters. That adage will be on full display at this year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where – for the first time – fans can follow every shot from every player via TOURCAST at both the host course (Pebble Beach Golf Links) and satellite course played in rounds one and two (Spyglass Hill Golf Course). ShotLink Pro will provide nearly double the amount of full data from ShotLink, powered by CDW, on the Monterey Peninsula compared to previous years, making this the most data-driven tournament in the 40-year history of the event.
Robust and real-time stats are critical to the fan experience, and the TOUR’s continued investment in this area is another example of progress from the PGA TOUR’s “Fan Forward” initiative, which aims to create more fan engagement by accelerating innovation that gives fans more of what they want.
The TOUR launched the initial Fan Forward survey in 2024, with over 50,000 respondents representing casual and core golf fans of all ages. When asked about enhancements that would most likely increase fan engagement with PGA TOUR broadcasts, “Greater integration of stats and data,” was one of the top responses from the youngest demographic of Fan Forward participants (age 18-34).
Fan impact
At the 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Wyndham Clark birdied Nos. 16 and 17 at Spyglass Hill during the first round, salvaging an even-par round of 72. Trailing by nine at one point, he was “off the radar” for fans and viewers, and without a full deployment of the TOUR’s highest-level ShotLink Pro data technology at the satellite golf course, there was no way to capture key moments of his first round.
Clark went on to win, highlighted by a 60 at Pebble Beach on Saturday, where he made 189 feet of putts and led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting (5.281), just two of the dozens of data points that were available at Pebble Beach, but not at Spyglass Hill.
With ShotLink Pro enabling TOURCAST from both golf courses, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am will have more data than ever before, providing a more engaging experience for fans through the broadcast and with shot tracking in TOURCAST on the PGA TOUR app and PGATOUR.COM.
- ShotLink Pro will provide data on every shot, so fans will know if the leader at Spyglass Hill is riding a hot putter, hitting his irons with pinpoint accuracy or leading in driving distance.
- ShotLink data will better inform decision-making for the live broadcast, providing comprehensive, real-time statistics that lead to player coverage. As a result, fans will get a more complete story about how a player reached his position on the leaderboard.
- Spyglass Hill will come to life as fans see how their favorite players fare on iconic holes, like No. 4 and its narrow green.
- Each player's season-long performance will be more accurate, as ShotLink will collect more data points than previous seasons.
![How ShotLink works on the PGA TOUR](https://res.cloudinary.com/pgatour-prod/image/fetch/h_900,w_1600,c_fit/https://cf-images.us-east-1.prod.boltdns.net/v1/static/6082840763001/f3f29e17-7b3b-46a5-8fb6-5de73cb195b5/fc214bbc-5c48-497e-96c8-a0c646936af3/1600x900/match/image.jpg)
How ShotLink works on the PGA TOUR
Inside the ropes: ShotLink Pro
The scope of this enhancement goes well beyond flipping a switch to show more data. In effect, Spyglass Hill is a second tournament that requires doubling the infrastructure normally deployed at Pebble Beach.
The on-site process begins with the mapping of the golf course more than a month before the tournament gets underway (in this case, mid-December). The comprehensive course maps on TOURCAST – fairways, greens, cuts of rough, bunkers, trees, terrain, the Pacific Ocean – are the result of drone mapping (2,173 miles flown per year) and mapping done on foot (1,184 miles walked by staff each year). The mapping is accurate to four centimeters of density, which provides a detailed experience in TOURCAST, as well as extremely precise statistics.
The golf course mapping not only feeds TOURCAST; it also feeds the broadcast as well as the scoring and statistics experiences on the PGA TOUR app and website. Because Spyglass Hill has been mapped for the first time, fans will get more data and visualization as they watch this year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on GOLF Channel, CBS and ESPN+.
Once competition begins, there are as many as 14 golf balls in the air at any moment (double that at a two-course event), and data from every shot is captured and sent around the world within milliseconds. That’s made possible because of 20-40 miles of fiber cable as well as more than 150 scoring dedicated golf ball tracking 4K cameras – and all that infrastructure is doubled with the addition of Spyglass Hill.
From a technology standpoint, the result is about 67 terabytes of data from each golf course; that’s the equivalent of a 120-plus channel streaming service.
But more importantly, from a fan standpoint, the result is more integration of stats and data from the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and a more engaging way to follow the second Signature Event of 2025.