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Three weeks into TGL, the league’s technology partner, full swing Golf, could not be more encouraged by the results.
Evan El-Saden, Full Swing’s Vice President of Product Innovation and Program Management, said as much during the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Florida, where Full Swing is among the many exhibitors.
“We have to be honest with ourselves,” El-Saden said. “And I think from our point of view, it’s been an overwhelming success for our company. I think anything that’s gone well is really good.”
While full swing has produced over a decade of top-of-the-line simulators that use cameras and infrared technology, it is the original company-based monitor that is full swing powered by TGL.
The full swing kit, which measures 16 data points, debuted a few years ago and currently retails at a bargain price, especially for running monitors, at $4,999. TGL uses 18 sets of full swings that are strategically placed inside the Sofi Center, and for each shot they measure data such as resistance speed and ball speed, which are then transmitted to toplaser technology for on-screen production.
Golfchannel.com spent a few minutes talking with El-Saden about what we’ve seen so far from TGL. Here’s that conversation, slightly edited for clarity:
Have you received a TGL boost from a business standpoint?
Al-Saden: Absolutely. A lot of people from the industry have reached out to see our our presence and it’s, you know, to be a technical provider of a technical infusion golf league is just a level of credibility, and we appreciate it and we appreciate it and we’re excited to be a part of it.
And at the consumer level you know, when you see them go, the conversions increase for the business, that’s just a benefit or a byproduct of them being a part of it, and that’s part of why we did it because we wanted to be at the forefront of it, but ultimately we hope to interest interest in the new demo, watching and enthusiastic about playing golf, and if I was young and had the stuff to play Golf, I would get into it Much, much younger. We were members of country clubs, but I never had anything like this. So I hope they can see it, say it’s pretty cool, it’s like an e-game type of mixed reality experience. And as soon as you know they get a few more reps under their belt, when they have a new audience, it’s only going to grow the game, inherently grow sales, and everybody that way.
With TGL, the technology is different than if you were to install it in your house, because it uses sets. What is the difference that people should understand? Like this isn’t what you buy to put in your house?
El-Saden: With TGL, basically the challenge was Stadium Golf, they hit – they hit from 21 and 35 meters off the screen, which was in the launch zone of the monitor to allow enough flight for the balls to help provide advance (data) . So for tracking, using a launch monitor combined with a toptracer that provides ball flight.
We developed the game, so using our designers on our game – of course we usually build for 16×9. Then they said, hey, basically we want to go to the imax screen and it was our own honest development. We worked with their architects like Nickuus Group, Agustin Piza, Beau Welling. They brought the hole strategy on paper and then our 3D designers designed in this unity game for TGL. It was built outside of our gaming platform because they wanted to make it agnostic to the character-like logic and configuration of a traditional game, partly because they didn’t have the format to find yet. So they made the game dumb, so to speak, they made the graphics, they made the ball fly, but we created a separate controller for them to say how to say like which team should go next and so on.
We’ve got tracking, we’ve got the game, and then we’ve got virtual green technology driving the green, and that’s really born out of the fact that a stadium doesn’t give you the same real estate as a golf course. How do you ease up for a player’s hole over the hole? So every hole we built has for them their own set of coordinates that we send to the fairway to rotate and then to the green to cheat. So that creates a singularity over 125 feet in diameter. Basically you can make endless possibilities for landscapes, which makes it tricky for the players to read, you know, but you’ve seen it, but I think the more that these guys practice, it can no longer understand, it can no longer understand You go and play a familiar hole on a course where you know the breaks.
In all three phases, to our credit, we’ve been real partners, because we do all these things at our consumer level, and that challenge was, can you do it at scale, robustly, meaning live, like you can’t fail, so we have mechanisms for break-ins, things like that. But then create an ecosystem where we send messages from one of these things to the game on the green to rotate. It’s that architecture that we’ve kind of built underneath that makes the whole thing go, so we’ve been involved in every aspect of what they’re doing and I think the grind of getting it to market, but to see it come to life was pretty special, and the only thing that’s really different from what we do at the consumer level is the sheer scale and reliability that you need to have in live television.
What has been the biggest challenge so far in getting it ready to go?
El-Saden: It is the true definition of innovation in its purest form in the sense that you don’t italize on something that already has a precedent. You don’t know, and one good example is we built a logic agnostic game there, because they didn’t have the rules to find it, so the big challenge was parallel development both in the league and for the league If it was there, we could have built it into the game , so you know which team is going to go next, this and that, and then they have things like hammer and alternate shots. Some of the holes are just individual, so I think one of the biggest challenges outside of the technology is working at scale, they had to build the technology, and is the format going to be in the league, like it’s going to be in the league, like they wanted me to do with competitive point of view.
What feedback have you received, either on social media or directly, that might need clarification?
Al-Saden: Some of the feedback — and I can totally understand it — is when these players come in and they’re hitting shots and they look, you know, maybe they haven’t had a chance to adjust. The only difference is, this is an outdoor experience. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but they have to adapt, and I think some players do – as we saw JT last night. He looked very comfortable in the environment. The other players are, you know, maybe they don’t want to adjust because they know they know their shots and they see the distance. They’re like, well, this shot should give that result, but the Golf simulation sometimes has different physics and that’s an adjustment. Some players adjust phenomenally well.
I will say the teams that practiced performed and announced the results. It is just the way it is. The teams that have had time to get in and can really get comfortable with it, you see the correlation with the performance and it’s only a matter of time before all the teams. But I think from a consumer perspective, they’re reading the emotions of golf and again the golfers are now in the stadium with the fans and the lights and they’re kind of in shell shock. So I think the juices and the shots are because you know there’s a lot of pressure. It’s different, it’s new, but again everyone will settle in.
Green speed, wind speed, wind, can everything be controlled?
Al-Saden: It’s all a configuration option. I don’t think they’ve used the wind yet, but they have that ability and that’s another element of this, right? So it’s sensitive that those guys feel and then they adjust, but when you don’t feel it, if they just put them in the wind like friction, guys, maybe maybe they don’t translate – again, I can see how I can see them , That shot is should have done this or that, so I think it’s graduation, but we built it so that you can enter those variables within the deadline.
Can you diagnose a tiger shot?
(In 2 years Tiger Woods had a 101 yard shot that ended up hitting 131 yards. Luke Kerr-Dineen – Golf.comin talking to players, they blame such errors on depth perception, writing that “they have no visual gauge of the distance they are trying to hit shots where they rely almost solely on the visual gauge to shoot.” )
El-Saden: I would attribute the shooting wedge to players (not) comfortable hitting in this space and the lies they take. So, you know, you hit the ball while it’s lying in the open, and these guys are able to put their balls. I’m never going to say that Tiger is wrong in what he believes, and I can’t comment on that particular shot, but I can tell you that there are a lot of other guys who played extremely well. Is it a question of adaptation, right? And again, we’re the majority of the technology, but a lot of the ball flight technology comes from the toptracer that we put into the game. … I just think all the players have to get comfortable with it and you’re going to start seeing guys throwing darts, who made those teams pretty comfortable last night, and I knew the Atlanta team in particular made a point after that Seeing how things went that they would practice there.
If you practice there and these guys are so good. They will adapt. Are you ready to adapt? I don’t even think it’s a conscious thing. I think they have to really make a concerted effort to figure out maybe what they need to do to be successful because those holes are a lot different strategically than what they play on tour, right? So where do you position yourself, you know, when you go for it? What are the risks? These are all calculations that they must learn.
