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Many avid golfers can quote Arnold Palmer’s famous aphorism that “Golf is deceptively simple, and endlessly complicated.”
But to me, the most interesting part of his full quotation comes a few sentences later:
“It is almost a science, yet it is a puzzle without an answer.”
Lately, more and more individuals and entities in golf seem to disagree, foolishly, with that line.
Golf can be solved, they suggest. There is a correct way to play every hole, a right answer to every shot and situation. Naturally, they seek to be paid - handsomely, in many cases - for their data-driven approaches and rigorous quantitative analyses.
The notion that a greater grasp of numbers can help us play better golf is seductive. And while statistics can undoubtedly be helpful in guiding certain overall strategies on the course, their overall power is more limited than their most ardent proponents would like to admit.
So is it any wonder, then, that golf has been fertile ground for artificial intelligence’s growing and looming influence on all aspects of life?
AI’s intrusion into golf is well underway. Club manufacturing giant Callaway has been touting artificial intelligence assistance in club design for several years, even incorporating “ai” into the naming of its clubs. To be fair, AI makes sense as a research and development aid. As I understand it, Callaway solicits an AI model’s assistance as it tests various nuanced club designs. Could an AI-designed driver finally fix your slice? Personally, I'm siding with golf instructors there, but your mileage may vary.
It’s in the playing of the game where we need to be wary of the potential AI-ification of golf. The 2025 PGA Show provided some dismal examples of products pushing AI into the beautiful analog experience of playing golf.
One AI-powered golf service that stood out to me was a chatbot to help give golfers swing advice. While the inputs on which the bot's recommendations are based seemed to include a library of literature about the swing, given the propensity of AI chat services to misdirect, misinterpret and invent answers seemingly out of thin air, it seems like texting an only moderately-informed computer for help is risky at best. The nearest know-it-all golfer at your home course will gladly dispense dubious advice for free.
What's more, delegating real introspection about your golf game to a third party means you will be less invested in the results, and therefore harder-pressed to actually play better. As reported by TIME, a recent study from MIT noted shockingly low levels of cerebral engagement from subjects who used ChatGPT to write academic essays. "The paper suggests that the usage of LLMs [Large Language Models] could actually harm learning, especially for younger users," reads the article. In similar fashion, golfers earnestly seeking AI-shortcut advice will fall well short of their goals.
A more mainstream but still discomfiting example of AI intrusion into golf is Arccos’ so-called AI Caddie capability. I have used Arccos in the past for shot-tracking across several rounds, and I think the data and information it can provide is useful. I recommend it for golfers who want an in-depth data analysis of their own games. But I would steer clear of the AI Caddie, personally, because I worry that turning shot-by-shot decision-making over to The Cloud further disengages a golfer from the process of sizing up a shot, and there are always factors affecting on-course situations that even the most well-fed data analysis engine cannot account for.
Golfers who turn their minds into a 15th club will always have an advantage over those who offload the mental aspect of shot-prep to someone - or something - else. This point should be obvious, but part of the essential skill of golf is developing an innate sense of one’s own tendencies and capabilities. The repeated process of assessing everything about a shot - the lie of the ball, the wind, the temperature, the firmness of the green, the design of the hole and what it means for preferred misses, the stage of the round, the status of the match - is what turns golf from a rote mechanical pursuit to an intellectually immersive one. To lean on a sophisticated but dispassionate computer means denying oneself the opportunity to cultivate powers of feel and sound judgment - building-blocks of not just a superior game but a richer golf life.
Are all statistical approaches to golf worthless? Hardly. Is all AI evil? No. But the aggression with which various tech influences are being thrown at golf should give anyone pause. Is the latest tech trend meant to help us or monetize us? Too much reliance on sparkling tech and cold, hard data in golf invites a potential future where the variables that make the game an interesting and nuanced outdoor game will be seen as antiquated and inconvenient and we’ll all end up smacking balls off of perfect flat lies into screens. No thank you.
Comments (1)
An important, thoughtful article.
I can tell you that your point garnered from Time magazine/MIT about students using Chat GPT is absolutely vital. Having seen students whom I’ve taught use this or similar forms of AI, it’s clear that nearly every one of them who did only abused it rather than used it as a genuine learning support. Knowing that, my policy became that all essays were written in class.
AI does have its applications, to be sure, but the idea of using it for golf instruction is extremely dubious. Correcting any swing fault, for example, is a far more complex process than AI can handle at this stage–and maybe ever. Those golfers who believe their problems will actually be addressed properly will find their efforts in vain. They are naive about the difficulties of hitting a golf ball accurately and consistently. Consider that nearly all of the top golfers in the world use elite instructors, and everyone should have some idea of the challenge to “instantly fix” (there is virtually no such thing) or, in reality, to somehow improve one’s ball striking.