How AI will impact course setup at the Players, future Tour events 

Artificial Intelligence is coming for the PGA Tour. Or rather, it’s being welcomed by the PGA Tour. 

As part of numerous announcements made at the Players this week, the Tour will debut its “AI Course Setup Tool” to help do exactly that: set up courses for the best players in the world. 

According to a Monday morning release, “[It] allows the team to set tee and pin flag locations on the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass as well as generate simulations for expected scoring results, driving distance, and other game-related statistics.”

The Tour produced three videos accompanying the release, explaining how the tool will augment its typical setup processes given the hundreds of thousands of shots it has archived over the years. Stephen Cox, VP of Rules and Competitions, will be in charge of implementing its use this week as the lead official for the Players.

Instruction

“What this allows us to do is — hole by hole — have a bit of a glimpse into the future of — if we set up a hole this way, what would it look like,” Cox said. “On some of the changes we’ve made at TPC Sawgrass, we can run some simulations to give us a gauge for how that hole is going to play across the standard of player that is going to be competing in the Players Championship.”

In many ways this is the obvious next step for the massive sets of data the Tour has collected over the years. It has operated the ShotLink system for a full 20 years at most Tour events. For every foot closer a hole is cut to the edge of a green, the Tour is able to understand what that means for scoring average on a given day. With events typically using similar hole and tee locations over the years, that dataset can help predict what will be easy, difficult or unfair for pros given the conditions — beyond just the obvious. It may be subtle, but working with information ahead of a tournament rather than post-tournament is a worthwhile endeavor for the Tour’s tournament committees. 

Cox referenced changes made to TPC Sawgrass, what it could mean for the field, and how tournament organizers are anticipating it. Look no further than the 6th hole, which used to see players tango with a large tree just off the tee box, but hasn’t existed for the last decade. Considered a strategic element of Pete Dye’s original design, the Tour has reinstated a leaning tree in that position on the 6th and would be able to use its AI Course Setup Tool to anticipate what that could mean for the tournament. Cox also sees the tool helping the Tour decide how to implement other architectural features at Tour courses moving forward.

“The other element it allows us to do is we make more architectural changes, Cox said, images of imaginary trees moving across edges of a fairway on a computer screen. “We can lean into What would be the outcome if we did this? 

“Add additional bunkers, narrowing of fairways, adding in of trees or other landforms to challenge the player in different ways. What is the impact of making those changes before we go to the length of spending huge amounts of time, energy and resources in making these changes.”