SHINECOCK HILLS, N.Y. — Tens of thousands of golf fans flocked to eastern Long Island this weekend to watch the world’s best golfers battle strong Atlantic winds and winding fairways at the 126th U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.
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While the tradition of golf has remained largely unchanged since tournaments began in the late 1800s, the AI boom has ushered in a new generation of tools to help players understand the rules of the game and fans enjoy major tournaments.
To help players understand the rules of golf and receive quick, clear advice, the United States Golf Association, the U.S. sport’s governing body and organizer of the U.S. Open, recently launched a chatbot-like tool called Rules AI.
“Rules AI is about meeting golfers where they are and giving them access to answers that are as good or better than the experts,” Craig Winter, senior director of golf rules at the USGA, said in an email to NBC News. “The USGA deeply respects the tradition of golf, but that doesn’t stop us from enhancing people’s golf experience.”
The USGA has 24 ground rules that cover everything from equipment requirements to penalties players face for hitting the ball in a sandy bunker.
But interpreting these rules can be as difficult as hitting a ball against a flagpole. What should a player do if the ball comes to rest on a paved (unplayable) road? What if the golf ball bounces off an alligator’s head and lands in a pond?
Rules AI debuted in a pilot phase in late May, allowing players at certain golf clubs to try out the technology through one of the USGA’s mobile apps. For example, users can enter questions about whether they are allowed to move their balls from an area of dirt due to construction, or how many clubs they are allowed to carry in a bag, and receive an immediate written answer.
To give fans visiting this year’s U.S. Open a chance to experience the new service, organizers installed a 7-foot-tall interactive screen in the pavilion next to the third hole. The setup, which shows AI-generated rules administrators, was staffed by employees of Deloitte, the consulting firm that helped build the USGA’s system.
The AI avatar considered the visitor’s question for a few seconds and then issued a succinct ruling, specifically citing the USGA rulebook. The avatar repeatedly praised NBC News for asking “creative” questions, such as whether beer cans could be used in place of T-shirts.
“There are definitely situations on the course where you would use it,” said Joe Kuhig, who was there to support his friend Bourne Harbor playing in the tournament. Kuhig, who plays on the golf team at Lewis University in Illinois, said he wished he had a dedicated USGA expert to help him resolve the difficult ruling. “Many of the USGA’s rules are just written in a very general way, so that tool could help you consider the entire situation for a particular shot,” he says.
Rules AI’s landing page includes a disclaimer that the system should not be used as a substitute for human officials’ rulings, and also points out that generative AI technology is not foolproof.
For many years, the USGA has operated a telephone and email service to answer golfers’ difficult rules questions. Rules AI was designed by learning how human USGA experts handle difficult decisions and using over 25,000 real-world questions derived from these interactions.
Anthony Santora, the USGA’s managing director of IT and leader of the team that developed the rules AI, emphasized the importance of this human expertise.
“With generative AI, the data you use is what sets you apart,” he said. “These 25,000 question and answer pairs are our magic, our superpower. We didn’t pull them from the open internet.”
Santora said his team also focused on making sure the Rules AI answered only golf-related questions and built in safeguards to prevent inappropriate answers or sharing sensitive information. He added that the rollout has been going well so far.
“Our hope is that one day we will be able to provide a one-stop shop for all your golf questions,” Santora said.
The USGA hopes to roll out Rules AI nationwide by spring 2027. Because the technology is still new, many fans strolling around the sunny course said they didn’t know about it.
“I’ve never heard of an AI rules chatbot, no,” said Bruin Richardson, who was visiting that day from New York City. “But it looks interesting.”
One of the four major golf championships along with the British Open, Masters, and PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and its sister tournament, the Women’s Tournament, are the crown jewels of the USGA. The USGA is made up of 55 local golf associations across the country and works with the UK golf governing body to establish the core rules of the sport.
The USGA has long embraced automation in other areas as well. You can now automatically track the arc of a player’s shot using a radar gun, clip highlights and upload them to your website in real time, and provide a textual description of a player’s every move.
“I’ve worked on the production side of other sports, but golf is unlike any other sport,” said Dave Giancola, senior director of global media for the USGA. “There are 30,000 shots in 72 holes by 156 players. We couldn’t have enough people to interpret that data, interpolate it, and translate it into a format that’s understandable not just to avid golf fans, but to casual sports fans.”
Giancola said AI gives the team more flexibility to take that data and stitch it with incoming TV footage from broadcast TV cameras mounted on drones, towers and cranes to create products that improve the viewing experience for fans on the track and at home.
Just a few weeks ago, the USGA announced another AI-powered product, RangeCast, at the U.S. Women’s Open. This will allow fans to view and analyze players’ warm-up shots on the driving range with complete ball flight data.
RangeCast joins ShotCast, which debuted last year and provides shot-by-shot graphic visualization for fans visiting the USGA’s website or mobile app. ShotCast can also display AI-generated text summaries of each shot, helping fans assemble the story of each hole.
Ned Horton, who was visiting with Couhig that day, said he was already finding ShotCast very useful. “From where I was standing on one hole, I couldn’t see the player’s actual shot,” he told NBC News. “ShotCast makes it easier to understand the situation and the different options players have.”
This year, the USGA website and app will also introduce a broader AI-generated overview that can compare a player’s round to the rest of the field, dynamically updating as other players finish and leaderboards move.
But some among the thousands of spectators roaming the sandy paths and knee-high grass were less bullish about the role of AI in tournaments and golf in general.
“Golf is an escape from the distractions of life,” one fan told NBC News. “I want to live my life in the moment, and I left my phone at home today to escape the noise.”
Meanwhile, the USGA’s Giancola said he envisions a more interactive future for the tournament, perhaps employing technology such as AI-powered glasses that would allow fans to track players’ shots against a golf-ball-colored afternoon sky.
This is all part of the USGA’s mission to make the sport more accessible to a new generation of fans, he said.
“As a fan of golf, technology and the U.S. Open, I’m personally very excited to see what we can do,” Giancola said. “This championship knows no limits.”
