Tech – Ultra Golfing

Aircast.Tech, aiming to improve streaming, wins top honors at Tech Lab

admin — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:25:44 +0000

AI is being used creatively by numerous companies, but Aircast.Tech aims to improve fan experiences at golf tournaments and other sporting events.

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Penn. — Startup founders, technology experts and golf industry insiders from around the world gathered in a hospitality tent perched above the 17th tee at Aronimink Golf Club on Tuesday to not only catch a glimpse of the players as they practiced on the long par 3, but also participate in the third-annual Golfweek Tech Lab.

Think of the event as the “Shark Tank” of golf, with small companies from a variety of sectors trying to impress a panel of judges with solutions to challenges that face the world of golf and sports.

As you might expect, two words that were inescapable at the 2026 Golfweek Tech Lab: artificial intelligence.

Golf.AI is using the technology to create agents that can provide personalized answers when golfers call a club or resort. Bantee uses it to not only allow players to share their round on a customized social media platform, but also build customized buddy trips after picking a region, how much golf they want to play and where they want to stay.

After the judges had a chance to see and talk with each company, however, it was Aircast.Tech that emerged as not only the winner in the Media & Digital Solutions category, but also the Grand Prize winner.

Clubhaus won in the Business Solutions category and Groove Golf won in Player Performance. Piing.Events won in Fan Engagement.

Founded by Australian native Craig Horobin, Aircast is tackling a problem that almost every modern sports fan has experienced: live sports that no longer feel truly live.

Whether it’s a text message from a friend spoiling a touchdown before it appears on your screen or trying to stream video from a crowded golf course where the signal constantly buffers, delays have become an accepted frustration of the streaming era. Aircast is attempting to eliminate much of that lag by delivering synchronized video and audio feeds to mobile devices in less than a second, even inside crowded venues.

“It just gives fans added context to what’s going on,” Horobin said. “Not just right in front of them, but on other holes as well.”

For golf, the application is obvious.

Fans standing beside a green or tee could use a tournament’s existing app to instantly switch between featured groups, alternate camera angles, commentary feeds and replays happening elsewhere on the course without dealing with the 30- to 60-second delays that plague most streaming services.

Horobin said Aircast’s technology is designed to work quietly in the background through software embedded into existing apps rather than forcing fans to download yet another platform.

A fire-less, fireside chat at @golfweek Tech Lab at Aronimink Golf Club with Kevin Scott, @PGA CTO Kevin Scott, George PGA Senior Dir. of Enterprise Technology, and Kris Hart Golfweek Senior Dir. of Growth & Ventures. pic.twitter.com/hwvDo1TkFi

— David Dusek (@Golfweek_Dusek) May 12, 2026

“What we want to do is be as frictionless as possible,” Horobin said. “If the PGA integrated our SDK into their app, once a fan got on site, geo-fencing would detect that they’re there and they would be able to access the feeds available over that network.”

The technology also addresses one of the biggest challenges facing live sports venues: overloaded cellular networks.

At large sporting events, even sending a text message or uploading a photo can become difficult once tens of thousands of fans are concentrated in one area. Horobin said Aircast minimizes bandwidth requirements by transmitting feeds in a one-way distribution model rather than relying on the constant back-and-forth data traffic of traditional streaming systems.

“It doesn’t congest or contend the network,” Horobin said. “We section off a small part of the network and make sure people can access those feeds directly from broadcast.”

While golf presents a natural use case because fans are spread across an entire property, Aircast has already gained traction in tennis, another sport where multiple matches happen simultaneously. The company has worked with the Australian Open and is preparing to support other tennis events this summer.

Horobin founded Aircast in 2017 while working in broadcast technology for major international events, including the Olympic Games, FIFA World Cups and Commonwealth Games. What began as a side project became a full-time focus during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the shutdown of live events allowed him and his small team to fully develop the platform.

“There’s been companies in the past that have tried this and not been successful,” Horobin said. “For us, awareness is huge. It’s getting people to realize this is available.”

And if Aircast succeeds, the next evolution of watching sports may not involve choosing between being at home or attending in person.

It could finally deliver the best parts of both experiences at the same time.

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L.A.B. Golf LINK putters blend blade looks with new tech

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:22:21 +0000

L.A.B. puts its Lie Angle Balance tech into classic blade shapes with the new heel-shafted LINK.2.1 and LINK.2.2 putters.

Gear: L.A.B. Golf LINK.2.1, LINK.2.2 putters

Price: $499 (stock), $599 and up (custom)

Specs: CNC milled 303 stainless steel head with black PVD finish. LINK 2.1 narrow blade, LINK 2.2 square-back blade. Custom options include lie angle, shaft length, head weight, alignment marking, shaft and grip.

Available: March 18 (online), April 23 (retail)

Who it’s for: Golfers who prefer the look and flow of a traditional heel-shafted blade but want more consistency in face control and start line.

What you should know: L.A.B. Golf has taken its Lie Angle Balance technology, which has largely lived in unconventional shapes, and built it into two classic-looking blade profiles. The result is a putter that looks familiar but swings like a zero-torque offering to keep the face square to the putting stroke’s path.

The Deep Dive: For years, L.A.B. Golf has asked golfers to rethink what a putter should look like if the goal is to make more putts. The company’s earliest designs like the DF2 and DF3 made that point clearly, even if they did not always win beauty contests.

The concept was simple: if you can reduce or eliminate torque in the putter head, you can make it easier to return the face square at impact and make putts roll down your intended target line more easily. That idea became Lie Angle Balance, and it has been the foundation of everything L.A.B. has built.

The challenge has never been performance. It has been getting golfers comfortable with the look.

That is where the LINK.2.1 and LINK.2.2 step in.

At address, both models check the boxes that traditionalists care about. The LINK.2.1 is compact and clean, with the proportions of a classic, narrow heel-toe weighted blade. The LINK.2.2 stretches that shape into a square-back profile, adding a little more size and stability without straying too far from familiar territory. Both are heel-shafted. Both sit square. Neither asks you to adjust your eyes or look at something unconventional.

What they do ask you to reconsider is how the putter moves.

Lie Angle Balance works by aligning the shaft axis with the putter’s center of gravity. When that relationship is correct, the head resists twisting during the stroke. Instead of opening or closing relative to your stroke’s path as you swing, it wants to stay square to the path.

For golfers, that changes the job description. Rather than managing face rotation with timing and feel, the goal becomes making a smooth, repeatable motion and letting the putter return to square on its own. Whether your stroke has a strong arc, a slight arc or very little arc at all, the face behavior becomes more predictable.

That predictability is what many players notice first. Putts tend to start closer to the intended line, and there is often less sense of needing to “fix” the face or use your hands and wrists.

Bringing the concept of Lie Angle Balance to a heel-shafted blade is where things get complicated. With a center-shafted mallet, it is relatively straightforward to align the shaft axis with the center of gravity. Move to a heel-shafted design, and the geometry shifts. The shaft axis moves depending on lie angle, and small changes in shape or mass distribution can throw everything off. That is why earlier L.A.B. models leaned toward larger, more unconventional forms.

The LINK putters borrow the idea of a variable-height hosel that debuted in the OZ.1 HS putters last season. By designing the hosel (which L.A.B. refers to as a riser) to be taller as the lie angle increases, L.A.B. designers could keep the shaft axis aligned with the center of gravity, solving the puzzle without giving up the look golfers prefer.

For a long time, the ideal scenario for L.A.B. has been clear: deliver Lie Angle Balance in a shape that does not require an adjustment period just to accept what you are looking at. A heel-toe blade that behaves like a torque-resistant design.

That is the lane the LINK.2.1 and LINK.2.2 are trying to occupy.

For golfers who have been curious about L.A.B. but hesitant to move away from a traditional blade, this could be the entry point. The setup looks familiar. The stroke feels different in a subtle way, but relatively quickly the benefit tends to show up in start line consistency and, for some players, improved distance control because the face is not being manipulated as much through impact.

That does not mean it will suit everyone. Some golfers rely on the sensation of the face opening and closing to create rhythm, and a more stable head can feel unusual at first. Like any putter, it still has to match your eye and your stroke.

But if you have ever stood over a putt feeling like you needed to be perfect to start the ball online, these designs are aimed directly at that problem.

L.A.B. has spent years proving that its technology works. The LINK.2.1 and LINK.2.2 suggest the company is now just as focused on how that performance is delivered to golfers who are not interested in making a visual compromise.

That combination of familiarity and function is what makes these feel different from anything the brand has done before. And it is why, for L.A.B., this might be as close as they have come to the putter they have been trying to build all along.

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Arccos Air shows how golf tech can finally get out of the way

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:20:48 +0000

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.

Shop Arccos Air

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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