air – Ultra Golfing https://ultragolfing.com Golf news & updates Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:20:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://ultragolfing.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/cropped-UG_Favicon-32x32.png air – Ultra Golfing https://ultragolfing.com 32 32 Arccos Air shows how golf tech can finally get out of the way https://ultragolfing.com/arccos-air-shows-how-golf-tech-can-finally-get-out-of-the-way/ https://ultragolfing.com/arccos-air-shows-how-golf-tech-can-finally-get-out-of-the-way/#respond Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:20:48 +0000 https://ultragolfing.com/arccos-air-shows-how-golf-tech-can-finally-get-out-of-the-way/

Arccos Air removes sensors and friction from game tracking, using AI to deliver data without changing how you play.

For more than a decade, Arccos has been chasing a simple idea: If technology is going to help golfers, it has to get out of the way.

That’s why the new Arccos Air feels less like a new product and more like a destination Arccos has been steering toward for over a decade.

The concept behind Arccos Air — which costs $349 and includes a year’s subscription to Game Tracking (valued at $199.99) — is deceptively modest. When you arrive at the first tee, turn on the Arccos app and the matchbook-size Arccos Air unit, then put your phone away, drop the Arccos Air in any pocket and play. No club sensors needed. No tapping. No mid-round housekeeping. Arccos Air houses gyroscopes, accelerometers and a microphone that analyze and recognize a golf shot, and GPS identifies your exact location on the course. The system connects one shot to another and gathers data about your round as you play.

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When you’re done and the round syncs with the Arccos smartphone app, the data is there to be studied. Shot distances, Strokes Gained data and strategy insights that can teach you about your strengths and weaknesses. If the system made mistakes, they can be edited with a few taps.

Shot- and game-tracking without sensors may not sound like a big deal, but if you’ve ever played with a game-tracking system, you understand there are friction points. Sensors can fall off, their batteries can die, clubs clack together and create misreads, and editing can be a chore. None of that is a deal-breaker, but it adds up.

What Arccos Air is really trying to do is remove the need to change how you play golf to get great stats and data. The company has talked for years about an “invisible” system, one that works whether you think about it or not. Air is the best expression of that idea so far. It leans hard into machine learning, using a historical database of 1.5 billion golf shots and over 25 million tracked rounds to recognize swings, impacts and outcomes without needing a sensor on every club. So, in reality, golfers around the world who have been using Arccos have trained the system and made Arccos Air possible.

All of that said, there are tradeoffs, and Arccos isn’t pretending otherwise. Without sensors, the system doesn’t automatically know which club you hit on any specific shot. For golfers who live and die by club-by-club dispersion charts, that matters. But Arccos’ counter is persuasive: much of its strategy engine and strokes-gained modeling has always been built around distance buckets and dispersion patterns, not club labels. In other words, it often matters more where the ball went and how far it traveled than whether you labeled it a 7-iron or a 6.

If you want that level of detail, you can still add sensors. Air doesn’t replace the traditional system so much as loosen the gate around it. That’s an important distinction. Arccos Air isn’t an ultimatum. It’s an invitation.

What makes this moment interesting is how Air fits into the rest of what Arccos has been rolling out over the last few months. The Smart Laser rangefinder reframes how golfers think about distance by emphasizing how a shot plays rather than its simple point-to-point distance. The AI Strategy feature uses course topography and massive data sets to recommend targets. The Green Maps now reveal how the ball should behave on the greens.

Taken together, it feels like Arccos is betting that golfers are finally ready to trust automation, but accuracy still matters more than novelty here. If Air misses shots or creates doubt, golfers will abandon it quickly. However, if it quietly gets things right often enough, the absence of friction becomes Arccos’ best way of helping golfers get smarter.

Ultimately, the best golf technology not only makes you feel smarter in the moment but also calmer. Less rushed. Less unsure. Less tempted to force a decision because you don’t quite trust what you see or what your gut tells you. Arccos Air is designed to put you in a well-informed, clear mental space so you can concentrate on playing and, when you’re done, dig into data to gain insights and knowledge.

Arccos has always been about data, but Air feels more like the company is getting to where it has always wanted to be — out of your way, doing its job.

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PGA Tour golf is coming back to the worldwide leader’s main channel.

On Monday morning, the PGA Tour announced that first and second round coverage from this week’s Farmers Insurance Open will be aired on ESPN’s linear cable network in addition to the Tour’s typical broadcasts on ESPN+, Golf Channel and CBS.

The announcement makes the Farmers Insurance Open the first golf tournament to air on ESPN in nearly two decades and opens the door for the Tour to expand its televised hours on one of America’s largest and most influential cable networks. It also juices the audience and reach for one of the most highly anticipated PGA Tour appearances in some time: five-time major champion Brooks Koepka’s return after nearly four seasons with LIV Golf.

According to a person with knowledge of the Tour/ESPN agreement, the broadcast “expansion” to ESPN’s cable channels is not a new agreement between the two parties, and will not reap the Tour an additional rights fee. Rather, the move is a one-week “test” in addition to the Tour’s outstanding ESPN+ agreement. The ESPN broadcast will be a simulcast of the ESPN+ feed, will go off the air before Golf Channel’s broadcast kicks in each evening, and is currently scheduled only to cover this week’s Farmers Insurance Open, though both sides could work to find a pathway to make the relationship a more permanent arrangement, should all go according to plan.

brian rolapp speaks at an NFL media press conference in an illustration in front of Jay Monahan.

Who is Brian Rolapp? Insiders speak on PGA Tour CEO’s pedigree and plan


By:

James Colgan



In other words, the money will stay the same, but the audience reach will dramatically increase for the Tour — a strategy that fits in line with new Tour CEO Brian Rolapp’s grander views about live sports. In his previous job at the NFL, Rolapp spearheaded an NFL media strategy that obsessed over reach and consequence, sometimes at the expense of money — an approach rooted in the theory that a large, captive audience was the key to world dominance.

Historically, the Tour has taken a slightly more restrictive view of its media rights, reaping as much value as possible for every second of live action sold. The ESPN tryout flies in the face of that belief, though it does present a win-win upside for the Tour and ESPN: The Tour can claim better ratings and a larger share of viewership during an early-week window when it otherwise wouldn’t be on TV; and ESPN can claim some free programming to fill its airwaves … with the added benefit of showcasing Brooks Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour exclusively.

Officially, the event is the first for the Tour on ESPN since the network ended its relationship with the Tour after the WGC-Barbados World Cup in 2006. Golf Channel has covered the majority of the PGA Tour’s early-week coverage in recent years, though ESPN reentered the pool of Tour broadcast partners at the turn of the decade when it signed an agreement to carry early-day streaming coverage on ESPN+.

The Tour’s current round of TV rights agreements runs through the end of the decade, and its partners at CBS, ESPN and NBC pay the Tour an estimated $750 million per year. ESPN pays the Tour around $100 million per year for the right to air PGA Tour Live on ESPN+, but also holds deals to air early week coverage of the Masters and PGA Championship, and is the exclusive broadcaster of the TGL.

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