“He’s invented something that has changed the industry”
– Toptracer president Ben Sharpe on founder Daniel Forsgren
Our Story
In the late ’90s, Daniel Forsgren was watching golf from his living room in Sweden and growing increasingly frustrated. He couldn’t see the ball.
Seeing the ball—something so fundamental to the golf-viewing experience—was next to impossible with the technology of the day. So Daniel set out to make a change.
He spent the next several years tinkering with a new kind of camera with sensors that could detect a golf ball flying through the air. The sensors connected to a computer that looked for a small, white object and identified it through each frame of the shot. Daniel quit his IT job in 2003 to focus on developing a prototype.
In 2006, Protracer was born.
Soon after, the PGA TOUR, European Tour, and television outlets all over the world jumped at the opportunity to partner with Protracer. Golf fans could finally see the flight of a golf ball through on-screen graphics, along with speed, distance, and other valuable insights. Watching golf on TV would never be the same.
On a quest to bring the technology to an even bigger audience, Protracer launched the first prototype of Protracer Range in 2012. The system, which used the very same technology seen on TV, could be installed at driving ranges to trace and analyze shots hit by ordinary range-goers.
Impressed by Daniel’s innovation and inspired by his company’s mission to enrich the game of golf, Topgolf Entertainment Group acquired Protracer in 2016 and rebranded the tech as “Toptracer.”
In 2021, tradition met technology when Toptracer struck a long-term partnership with The Home of Golf. As the official range technology of St Andrews Links, Toptracer Range was installed at St Andrews’ practice facilities and the Old Course is exclusively available to play virtually at Toptracer Range-enabled courses around the world.
Today, Toptracer can be seen on major championship golf broadcasts throughout the golf season. Toptracer Range is an “Official Range Technology” of the PGA of America and its nearly 28,000 PGA Pros worldwide, and the tech is installed in more than 24,000 bays globally.
Our Team
We’re always on the lookout for talented folks to join our growing team. If you’ve got the know-how, drive, and passion to change golf for the better, we’d love to hear from you.
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