How Apple Vision Pro and Google Cloud is changing golf

Golf is an incredibly difficult sport to cover on television. Unlike most other sports which have a fixed boundary in which it is played – and in most cases, much smaller and defined boundaries – a golf course is a vast landscape that is almost impossible to be manned by cameras. Add to it the fact that there are usually about 72 players in different parts of the course at any given time, which makes the job of the producer that much tougher, because unlike cricket, you just can’t focus on the bowler, followed by the batsman, and then track a single ball.
Then there is another thing about golf fans. Because most of them play the sport, they want to get as much closer to the action when watching elite golfers to appreciate the shapes of the shots, the line taken, the lie of the ball, the club swing, or the line of the putt.
So, when the second-screen phenomenon became mainstream, and more and more fans are now consuming sports action with multiple screens, golf got an opportunity it did not have before.
The most technologically advanced sport of all times – in terms of equipment, which is space-age – golf now has a chance to engage its fans like never before.
Two announcements in two days – from two of the biggest rival tours in the world – promise to ramp up golf content consumption to another level.
On Thursday last week, LIV Golf announced that it was tying up with Google Cloud and MYP Sports to bring a Golf Companion App and enhanced live broadcast capabilities within the next few months.
A day later, the PGA Tour said it was launching the PGA Tour Vision, a new spatial app built for Apple Vision Pro.

Apart from new ways of engaging fans, LIV Golf hopes to leverage PMY’s expertise in data intelligence and Google Cloud’s generative artificial intelligence technologies to elevate the fan experience on and off the golf course.
The highlight will be the new ‘Any Shot, Any Time’ feature, through which fans will be able to select exactly which golfers, teams, or groups they want to watch at any given time. It would give them searchable and customisable on-demand highlight reels from any round of any LIV tournament. A similar feature, which sets the benchmark for how sports can be produced for fans, has been the highlight of Masters digital content for the past few years.
The Golf Companion App will include 3D aerial overviews of each venue, advanced real-time statistics, virtual caddy views, and customised competition recaps. It will be available for free for fans.
The PGA Tour Vision, developed for Apple Vision Pro, helps transform space into immersive, spatial golf experiences for fans and brings them closer to the action. It started with the par-3 seventh hole at Pebble Beach at last week’s AT&T Pebble Beach ProAm and will continue to expand and reach full 18-hole coverage at the Players Championship.
Wearing Apple’s Vision Pro glasses, which is now being sold for $3,500 (appx INR2.92 lakh), fans will be able to get inside the ropes and directly onto the tee boxes and greens during the tournaments while sitting in their drawing rooms.
According to a Tour release, “PGA Tour Vision displays key tournament information and video in 2D windows on top of a user’s space, while 3D-rendered models generated by Virtual Eye map real-time trails from live shot data captured during the tournament. Within 2D windows, fans can view leaderboards, scorecards, course information, schedule and tournament details, as well as video highlights. Live shot data is provided by ShotLink and made available to the app.”
I was lucky to experience a prototype augmented reality project that was being developed by Augusta National Golf Club and Magic Leap in 2019. Even though the actual product was a few years away from becoming a reality, it left me in awe.
Wearing the AR glasses, I could watch the action on the par-3 12th hole (the only one mapped at that time), from almost any place conceivable. I could walk right behind Rory McIlroy on the tee and watch him hit his shot, or walk to the middle of the green and watch Tiger Woods hitting his tee shot right at me. If I slightly tilted my head, I could see and pull up leaderboards, or get data on any player.
If you love watching golf, be prepared to be gobsmacked.

Tournament: AT&T Pebble Beach ProAm
Winner: Wyndham Clark (USA) – event reduced to 54 holes
Winner’s scores: 72-67-60 (17-under)
Prize fund/Winner’s Cheque: $20 million/$3.6 million
Top-5 scores: Ludvig Aberg (SWE) 2nd (68-65-67); Matthieu Pavon (FRA) 3rd (65-70-66); Mark Hubbard (USA) T4th (69-68-65); Thomas Detry (BEL) T4th (63-70-69)
Indian scores: No Indians in the field
Results
Report

Tournament: LIV Golf Mayakoba
Winner: Joaquin Niemann (CHI), beating Sergio Garcia (ESP) on fourth extra hole
Winner’s scores: 59-72-70 (12-under)
Prize fund/Winner’s Cheque: $25 million/$4 million
Team champion: Legion XIII -24 ($3 million), beating Crushers GC -20
Top-5 scores: Sergio Garcia (ESP) 2nd (65-70-66); Jon Rahm (ESP) T3rd (66-67-70); Dean Burmester (RSA) T3rd (67-66-70); Dustin Johnson (USA) T5 (67-71-67); Charles Howell III (USA) T5th (68-69-68); Brooks Koepka (USA) T5th (69-68-68)
Indian scores: Anirban Lahiri T21st (71-73-67)
Results
Report

Tournament: Bahrain Championship
Winner: Dylan Fritteli (RSA)
Winner’s scores: 71-70-63-70 (14-under)
Prize fund/Winner’s Cheque: $2.5 million/$425,000
Top-5 scores: Zander Lombard (RSA) T2nd (65-73-71-68); Jesper Svensson (SWE) T2nd (70-65-72-70); Frederic Lacroix (FRA) T4th (69-71-69-70); Ockie Strydom (RSA) T4th (66-71-69-73)
Indian scores: Om Prakash Chouhan MC (71-82)
Results
Report
Tournament: No event last week
Tournament: No event this week
Tournament: Women’s Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship
Winner: Chun-Wei Wu (Chinese Taipei)
Winner’s scores: 67-65-66-72 (18-under)
Prize fund/Winner’s Cheque: $0/$0 (winner gets entry into AIG Women’s Open, Amundi Evian Championship and the Chevron Championship)
Indian scores: Avani Prashanth T10th (68-69-71-71); Saanvi Somu T48th (73-72-75-73)
Results
Report
Tournament: No event this week
Tournament: No event this week
Tournament: No event this week
The article was published in this week’s edition of HT’s newsletter Fairways and Greens. Subscribe here.