News

PGA Championship 2019: Golf fans rip into CBS on social media over new "aerial shot tracer" on PGA broadcast

The modern-day golf broadcast features more technology than ever. Shot tracer, putting cones that show the line at top speed or at dying speed, every stat you could possibly think of, other things I can't think of off the top of my head, etc. As CBS found out on Saturday during the early portion of its PGA Championship coverage, sometimes less is more.

Justin Rose was among the first few groups to tee off in CBS coverage window, wearing a pretty whacky shirt that golf fans watching made plenty of jokes about on Twitter. But somehow, what they saw as he ripped his opening tee shot was much worse: Aerial Shot Tracing, CBS' latest and greatest technological advancement, though that's not how the viewers described it.

CBS tweeted out the first video of the Aerial Tracing, and the first thing you notice is that the camera view of Rose shrinks to a point where you almost can't see him on your TV screen, kind of like "picture in picture," which was huge back in like ... 2002. On the big screen was a view of the line of Rose's ball flight and where it was going to land:

Obviously, CBS felt quite good about this, good enough to roll it out for their second major broadcast of the season. The fans weren't as high on it, and the Twitter replies began to roll in at warp speed. A sampling of some of the funnier (and harsher) ones are below:

At least Aerial Tracing did make one guy happy:

Just kidding.

Unfortunately, for CBS' poor social media manager, there are plenty more where that came from. Normally, you could chalk this up to folks on social media just finding something to complain about, a daily occurrence, but I think they have a point here. If you spend enough time on Golf Twitter, you know fans really only ask for a few things: show a ton of golf shots from a ton of players (actual shots, not tap-in putts), and use pro tracer as much as possible. It's a very simple formula.