High-Tech Golf: A Stroke Of Genius?

Golf is supposed to be a simple game. Hit the ball with a stick and knock it into a hole.

For a long time it was simple, as the old equipment in Britain's golf museum shows. The museum displays wooden clubs and golf balls stuffed with feathers.

Now, though, science has arrived — and as CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports, the old game may never be the same.

The phrase, "it's not rocket science," is often used to describe something that's really not that complicated? Well, this actually is — and they've brought in a real rocket scientist to prove it. Steve Otto, formerly of NASA, is now doing with golf balls here what he did with missiles there.

"It's very similar. There's a lot of aspects of what we do that crosses over to rocket science," Otto says.

At The Royal and Ancient Golf Club in St. Andrews, Scotland, where golf was born, they now use a robot to measure the performance of clubs and balls. A modified missile-tracking system keeps score.

The speeds are a little slower, but there's enough complication there to keep the super-computers going.

They have to go to these lengths because manufacturers keep coming up with gear that makes the balls go farther. So much farther, in fact, that courses are having to be made longer because the pros are making them look too easy.

Even the amateurs are getting a benefit.

Comedian Bill Murray was warming up for a recent pro-am event, and spoke about one of golf's essential truths.

"They can hit the ball farther. It doesn't mean anything. I hit the ball a mile. You know, I am an athlete," Murray says with a smirk. "I hit the ball a long way, (but) it doesn't mean I score! You've got to be able to make the putts. It's gotta fall in the hole."

But then Murray has been a golfing rebel for a long time.

"The same number of people take up golf every year as quit golf and give it up forever," Murray says. "Do you think changing the ball is going to affect that? I think we need psychological help, more than technical help."