As a golf fan, one of the events I look forward to is the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass at the home of the PGA Tour in Ponte Vedra, Florida. The event has seen many magical moments such as Fred Couples making a par on 17 after hitting his first shot into the water and the iconic Tiger Woods “Better than most” moment.
This most recent Players Championship was highlighted by more unforgettable golf moments, culminating with Rory McIlroy’s win. For fans of the game, the PGA Tour turned on its AI-generated shot commentary via Tourcast, an interactive digital platform that tracks golf players. The application was first shown in beta at the 2024 Tour Championship and has seen several updates on its way to being rolled out for all to use.
Golf can be hard to follow since it’s not confined to a single playing field. Up to 156 players are spread across a massive course, taking about 30,000 shots in an average four-day tournament. The TV broadcast covers a couple thousand shots, typically by players at the top of the leaderboard or the big names. But what about the other tens of thousands of shots? As a Canadian, I’m always curious to see how Adam Hadwin, Corey Conners and other players from north of the border are doing. People from Norway likely want to follow Viktor Hovland closely.
This is where the AI-generated commentary can play a big role. Historically, the Tourcast app, ESPN or tournament website would give you very basic info – such as Hadwin made a par on #17 – but that’s it. The new AI feature in Tourcast brings every shot to life with real-time context and insights. Tourcast uses a real-time data collection and scoring system called ShotLink, which is a network of cameras, lasers, and on-course data collectors for tracking details like ball position and shot distance.
PGA Tour
At the event, I met with Scott Gutterman, senior vice president of digital and broadcast technologies for the PGA Tour, and we discussed the new offering.
“Every single shot now gets its own commentary, which includes a fact and context,” Gutterman explained. “The fact might be that Rory McIlroy hits a drive 385 yards and he has 125 yards left to the hole. But then we add context to the shot, such as that was McIlroy’s longest drive of the day and the longest on this hole. With 125 yards left, he has a 10% chance of putting it within six feet, which is the context we can now share.”
Built in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), AI commentary runs on Amazon Bedrock and uses the Claude and Anthropic models and will be part of every PGA Tour event moving forward. The goal is to ensure every player gets meaningful coverage, something that would be impossible to do manually.
There have been many comparisons between AI and the Internet and the impact to society. The Internet democratized access to information and now AI can play a similar role in democratizing expertise, which can help grow interest in the game of golf. The hard-core golf fan may understand how tough it is to get the tee shot close to the Sunday pin placement on the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass but the casual fan would not. AI providing the commentary to highlight this can help add an extra bit of interest and tension with the viewer that then leads to better engagement.
This update stems from the PGA Tour’s Fan Forward Initiative, which found that younger fans (aged 18-34) want more detailed stats and analysis. The AI commentary was introduced as a response to that demand.
Fans will soon be able to customize their own streams as the PGA Tour expands the AI commentary feature. For example, they will be able to create end-of-round summaries for their favorite players and even Golfbet-specific commentary. The PGA Tour wants to eventually offer a more interactive, multi-modal experience that includes text, voice, and video.
The AI commentary is the third big update to Tourcast this season. In January, at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Tourcast tracked every shot from every player at both Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass Hill Golf Course. This marked the first time it covered multiple courses in a single event. Another recent upgrade introduced shot plots for every hole, giving fans a clearer view of player performance.
While the addition of AI commentary to Tourcast is primarily a fun golf story, there is a lesson here for IT and business leaders. AI will eventually be part of every application and service we use – so how can brands take advantage of it to change customer and employee experience?
The PGA Tour has evolved its product several times based on fan feedback, and I would encourage corporate leaders to follow the same path. Engage with customers to understand how their needs are changing, and use AI to meet that demand.
PGA Tour