Amid buzzing drones and the rise of AI, Masters tries to balance tradition and tech
Amid buzzing drones and the rise of AI, Masters tries to balance tradition and tech
Patrons, minus their cellphones, cheer as Justin Thomas of the United States holes from a bunker on the second hole during the second round of the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club.
(Andrew Redington / Getty Images)
Cellphones are banned at the Masters. Food and drink prices are happily stuck in the 1970s — $1.50 for a pimento cheese sandwich — a charming holdover from yesteryear. And painted leaderboards are updated by hand.
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Meanwhile, behind the scenes, it's Jones (Bobby) meets Jetson (George). Drones whir over tee boxes. Fans all over the world can track every shot of every player — including balls thwacked on the driving range. As soon as someone finishes his round, his highlights of the day are instantly compiled by AI.
The challenge at this legendary tournament is as tricky as a downhill putt on 15. How does Augusta National lean into emerging technologies without compromising its storied tradition?
Get creative and you can grow the game. Get too cute and you can damage the brand.
'It's a balance,' said Fred S. Ridley, chairman of Augusta National. 'And it's not always easy.'
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That means moving in a Masters-like manner, which around here entails operating so quietly and efficiently that changes seem to magically appear.
'We certainly want to progress,' Ridley said. 'We want to try new things. We want to continue our mission to reach out and grow the game. But at the same time, we have to be cognizant of the fact that part of the magic of this place is those traditions and the mystique.'
On Friday, three familiar players sought to leave their own mark on Masters tradition. Justin Rose shot a 71 to maintain his lead at eight under par. Bryson DeChambeau shot a 68 and is one back, and Rory McIlroy, who needs a green jacket to complete a career Grand Slam, had a 66 to move to six under.
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'There's a bit of a sense that the course is playing a little bit differently today,' Rose said. 'A bit windier, for sure, out of a slightly different direction. So just trying to make some of those adjustments. I think it was a fairly favorable wind for the golf course in general, which is why I think you're seeing some good scores.'
Scores are posted by hand on the main leaderboard at the Masters golf tournament.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press)
In a larger sense, the winds of change at the Masters have been gusting for some time.
Across the street from Augusta National, through a tunnel under Washington Road, is the content center, nearly 90,000 square feet of colonial structures that house CBS and ESPN production teams, as well as the many media endeavors the club oversees, such as Masters.com, YouTube shows, podcasts, social media and the like. Inside, with its wainscoted white walls and dark oak floors, it's as luxurious and well-appointed as a Four Seasons hotel.
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This home for broadcast media is not to be confused with the center for other domestic and international media such as the Los Angeles Times and many more, which is closer to the course and similarly pristine.
The content center isn't open to the public but often has visitors, guests of the club, and for one week a year thrums with activity from before daybreak to long after nightfall. Parked in back are nearly 50 production trucks that form a broadcast village that was moved from the area behind the par-three course.
Step into the main floor of the content center and it's like entering a tee-time time warp, a sweet-spot Smithsonian, with photos, murals, touchscreen kiosks and the faint soundtrack of Masters radio from generations gone by.
'Tradition is everything at Augusta National — everything,' said Verne Lundquist, who covered the Masters for 40 years for CBS before retiring last year.
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Walk down the hallway and you'll find an acknowledgment of the first green jacket ceremony in 1949, a quote from sportswriter Herbert Warren Wind when he coined 'Amen Corner' in 1958, and a shot of Butler Cabin in 1965. Over here, more modern milestones such as the first color broadcast (1966), first Masters website (1996), first streaming (2006) and first mobile app (2009).
This wall honors famous moments on the course, from Gene Sarazen's double eagle on 15 — nicknamed 'The Shot Heard 'Round the World' — to Tiger Woods' fifth Masters victory in 2019.
The main Masters.com workroom looks like a modern newsroom, with about 200 new-age storytellers generating all types of content during the week of the tournament. (The place is pretty much empty the other 51 weeks of the year.) There are podcasters, video and audio production teams, photo editors, graphic designers, web publishers, a social-media team and international representatives who create material in Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Chinese, among other languages.
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Ringing the room are studios for shows such as the daily 'Mornings at the Masters' on the tournament's YouTube channel, and the 'Fore Please! Now Driving' podcast.
It's club policy that no employees speak on the record, but people who work at the content center will tell you about their 'crawl, walk, run' development process in which they won't rush to put a technology in place but instead will perfect and polish it before the unveiling. For instance, the Masters briefly had a Twitter account in 2009, then paused it and refined it for several years before relaunching.
The ability to show every shot in the tournament was available well before the Masters introduced it in 2019, but was held back to make quality improvements. The driving force, the club says, is a commitment to relevance, excellence and storytelling integrity.
Baseball great Ken Griffey Jr., center, speaks with former NFL player Ryan Fitzpatrick, left, and a patron during the second round of the Masters. Griffey is a credentialed photographer for the event.
(Ashley Landis / Associated Press)
The most cutting edge of the Masters technologies is done by IBM, which has created a 'digital twin' of Augusta National using aerial surveys and analyzed nine years of tournament data, nearly a million shots, with statistical ball data and ultra-detailed modeled contours of every green.
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With a few clicks on a giant video wall, someone operating the system can show you, for instance, that Woods never made a bogey or eagle on No. 13 during the nine years studied. (By comparison, Rory McIlroy eagled 13 on Friday for the sixth time in his Masters career.)
On the video game-type overview of the hole, a user can zoom in on every flight path and landing spot of every Woods shot.
Using AI technology and that huge sample size, along with wind and weather data, the program can fairly reliably forecast which holes will play tougher on a given day. The predictive models are field-based, not player-specific. IBM says that's because of Augusta National's interest in staying neutral.
The technology is exclusive to on-site demonstrations and not yet public, though there are ongoing discussions for broader fan access.
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IBM uses AI to provide a live-shot feed in which the best and most exciting shots happening around the course are streamed online. Computers select shots in part based the on the crowd reaction and player gestures, such as a fist pump or raised putter. The same technology is used to quickly cobble together a player's daily highlight reel that encapsulates his full round in about three minutes.
'It is a balance, and if we go back to the basics,' Ridley said, 'we go back to the fact that we have to continue to get better, we have an obligation under our mission to promote the values and the virtues of the game, and we have an obligation to respect tradition.
'So when you sort of put all that together, the way I look at it is we are using technology to tell the story of who we are, to tell the story of the Masters, to explain to people maybe that — particularly younger people — what the Masters is all about and why it matters to the game of golf.'
Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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