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When you think of the game of golf you usually don't think about lasers.
But the technology is now an integral part of the PGA Tour for fans, players and the broadcast.
ShotLink is a laser system that maps tee shots and putts.
It's real time information and stats can be fed to scoreboards, TV commentators, and viewers watching on TV or online.
Well, we have a fairway laser so that person's gonna select the player's name that they wanna shoot for, they're gonna look through a range finder, they're gonna sight the ball in, fire the laser, wait for the information to come to the handheld device.
And then hit enter which then sends it to our truck.
A doppler radar system placed on one or two holes can follow a ball in flight in real time.
So we know apex of the flight, we know spin rate, ball speed, swing speed, vertical launch angle, horizontal spin rate-
PGA golfer Ryan Palmer says he examines the shot length numbers to help improve his game.
I've used it a lot to find out my wedge game needs the most work and
It's paid off.
The data is also used by EA sports to create his PGA tour video game.
This year featuring top ranked golfer Rory Mackleroy instead of Tiger Woods.
All those stats that we're giving to them are changing the makeup of all the players in the game based on all the extended stats that we're now able to provide
With younger players like Macaroy and Masters Champion Jordan Speeth dominating the headlines the tour is delving deeper into tech to entice another generation of golf fans.
It's partly designed to stimulate more interest in the sport generally but also to focus people's attention on how cool these young guys are.
It's an approach the PGA hopes will be PAR for the course in the future.
In San Francisco.
I'm Kara Tsuboi, CNET.com for CBS News.
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