Between drones and AI, Masters tries to balance the past with the future

Rory McLero of Ireland won the Masters Golf Tournament. Robert Perry/PA Wire/DPA

Cellphones have been banned in masters. Food and drink prices are happily trapped in the 1970s – $ 1.50 for a Pento Paneer Sandwich – an attractive holdover from Yeslantryear. And painted leadersboards are updated by hand.

Meanwhile, behind the curtain, it meets Jones (Bobby) Jetson (George). Drone on the tea box. Fans worldwide can track every shot of every player – including balls on the driving range. As soon as someone finishes his round, his main attraction of the day is immediately compiled by AI.

The challenge in this mythological tournament is difficult to 15 as a downhill put. How does Augusta National bend in emerging technologies without compromising its stored tradition?

Get creative and you can increase the game. Get very cute and you can harm the brand.

“This is a balance,” Fred S., President of Augusta National. Ridley said. “And it is not always easy.”

This means moving in a masters-like manner, which works so quietly and efficiently here that changes are magically visible.

“We definitely want to progress,” Ridley said. “We want to try new things. We want to continue our mission to increase and grow the game. But at the same time, we have to be familiar with the fact that the magic of this place is those traditions and secrets.”

Last week, three familiar players demanded their mark on the Masters tradition. Justin Rose shot 71 to 71 to maintain his lead under eight. Bryson Decombo shot a 68 and came back, and Rory McLero, who completed a career Grand Slam, scored 66 runs to go under six.

“There is a bit of understanding that the course is playing a little differently,” Rose said. “Slightly curved, of course, out of a slightly different direction. So just trying to make some of those adjustments. I think it was a fairly favorable air for golf course in general, that’s why I think you are watching some good scores.”

In a large sense, the winds of changes in the masters have been lukewarm for some time.

Across the road from Augusta National, through a tunnel under Washington Road, there are material centers, about 90,000 square feet of colonial structures that oversee several media clubs along with House CBS and ESPN production teams, such as Master.com, YouTube shows, podcasts, social media and like. Inside, with its wainscoted white walls and deep oak floors, it is appointed as luxurious and well as a four season hotel.

For broadcast media, this house is not confused with other domestic and international media such as Los Angeles Times and the Center for many more, which is close to the course and so on the ancient.

The content center is not open to the public, but often visitors, guests guests of club, and thunder with premature activity for night time premature activity for a week a year. There are about 50 production trucks parked in the back that create a broadcast village that was transferred from the back area of the cross-three course.

Step into the main floor of the content center and it is like entering a T-time time war, a sweet-spot Smithsonian, with photos, murals, touchscreen kiosks, and unconscious soundtracks of masters radio from generations.

“Tradition is everything in Augusta National – everything,” Verne Lundquist said, who had covered Masters for CBS for 40 years before retiring last year.

Walk under the hallway and you will find an acknowledgment of the first green jacket ceremony in 1949, when they coined a shot of “Amene Corner” in 1958 and a shot of Butler cabin in 1965, a quotation of sportswater Herbert Warren Wind. Here, the first color broadcast (1966), First Masters (1996), first stream (2006), first masters (1966) and more modern milestones.

This wall on Wall 15 respects the famous moments from the double eagle of Jean Surgen, called “The Shot Herd ‘Round the World – Tiger Woods’ fifth masters in 2019 till winning.

The main masters.com workroom looks like a modern news room, which produces all types of materials during the tournament week. (This place is very empty for other 51 weeks of the year.) In other languages, podcasters making materials in Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Chinese, video and audio production team, photo editor, graphic designer, web publishers, a social-media team and international representative.

The ringing ring tournament’s YouTube channel has studios for shows like “Morning at the Masters”, and “Four please! Now driving” podcast.

This club is a policy that no employee speaks on records, but those who work in the content center will tell you about their “crawl, walk, run” development process, in which they will not hurry to give a place to a technology, but will be correct and polish before unveiling. For example, Masters summarized a Twitter account in 2009, then stopped it and refined it for many years before relaying it.

The ability to show every shot in the tournament was well available before being introduced by Masters in 2019, but was held back to improve the quality. Driving force, club says, is a commitment to relevance, excellence and integrity of storytelling.

Masters Technologies is the most sophisticated by IBM, which has created a “Digital Twin” of Agusta National using aerial surveys and analyzed nine-year data of the tournament, with about one million shots, statistical ball data and every green ultra-detailed model.

With a few clicks on a huge video wall, someone operating the system can show you, for example, Woods never made a bogie or eagle at number 13 during nine years. (Comparatively, Rory McLero on Friday 13 on Friday for the sixth time in his Masters career.)

On observation of video game-type of hole, a user can zoom on every flight path and landing spot of every wooden shot.

Using the AI technique and the size of that huge sample, with air and weather figures, the program can be strongly predicted that the holes will play hard on a certain day. The future model models are field-based, not a player-specific. IBM says that due to interest in staying neutral of Agusta National.

Technology is exclusive to on-site performances and is not yet public, although there is a discussion for broad fan access.

IBM AI is used to provide a live-shot feed in which the best and most exciting shots around the course are streamed online. Computer selects shots in part based on congestion reaction and parties based on gestures, such as a handful pump or raised poat. The same technique is used to quickly to a player’s daily highlight reel that surrounds its entire round in about three minutes.

Ridley said, “This is a balance, and if we go back to the original points,” Ridley said, “We go back to the fact that we have to continue to be better, we have an obligation under our mission to promote the values and qualities of the game, and we have the obligation to respect the tradition.

“So when you put all that together, the way I see it, we are using technology to tell the story that we are, to tell the story of the masters, to explain to the people that perhaps – especially young people – what is about masters and why it matters to the game of golf.”

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