Among the many understandable reasons to fear the rise of AI—security threats, wealth concentration, existential risk—the emergence of the first autonomous golf tournament commentator should probably rank low on the list of concerns. However, in the pockets of the world of golf, the introduction of just such chatterbot it stirred up agitation and scorn. A sample golf watcher comment from the complaint box called X:
The lamest broadcasters in golf can be quiet, AI slop has made their job safe.
How about sending this straight into space on a one-way ticket.
The question is simply, why???
The gnashing of teeth and eyes began last week when Troon Golf issued a press release about the 2026 New Mexico Open, scheduled for Sept. 14-16 at Turtleback Mountain Golf & Resort in Elephant Butte, about two hours south of Albuquerque. The event, which is run by the Sun Country Section of the PGA of America, has three former PGA Tour winners in the field, Notah Begay IIIMatt Every and Sean O’Hair, but it attracted buzz not for who would be on the course, but in the stand: Ryan Burr, who you may know from Golf Channel, alongside Begay, who would be Ping-Ponging between playing and commentary, and – the real attention – a broadcaster new to the scene called Duff Foreman.
If Duff Foreman It seems to have come out of nowhere, because “he” did. “He” has never played professionally or, for that matter, hit a golf shot, period. “It” did not pass quietly in the golf cabin from another sport. “He,” like Bob Costas, Mike Tirico and Marv Albert before him, didn’t hone his broadcasting skills at the Newhouse School of Public Communications. Duff is an AI agent conjured and built by Westport, Mass.-based digital media company Gopher Hole Productions. The bot makes its debut this week, analyzing the action in New Mexico, and an army of pitch-fork-wielding golf fans and members of the media have not been shy about airing their disbelief and general disapproval.
“My answer to that is, when people were riding horses and buggies, they didn’t ask for the car,” Paul Sidlo told me in a phone interview Tuesday after Duff’s second day on the job. “This is a car that can take you places you couldn’t go with a horse and buggy.”
Sidlo is the general manager of Gopher Hole and, for the past six months, one of Duff’s chief architects. Sidlo is a 3-D graphics and animation and digital strategist; he is also not new to amplifying how sports are presented, having served as creative director for five Olympic Games and 14 Super Bowls. But Duff Foreman is it the first AI golf commentator Sidlo worked on, meaning he watched the bot’s trip to New Mexico with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.
“It’s like watching a child come to fruition,” Sidlo said. “It takes a village to raise a child, and there are many parts and pieces that all come together to make it sing. So, yeah, I’m excited that we’re where we are.”
where exactly I know is a bit of a Rorschach test, the answer depends on your openness and / or expectation for such technology. Some viewers may be turned away the live stream of the tournament in awe of a digital commentator’s ability to quickly process, for example, a player’s winning percentage or the potential impact of changing weather patterns on the field. Others might have been, if not blown away by Duff’s golfing acumen, then at least intrigued or amused by his human(ish) qualities; Scottish (ish) accent; and the unerring conviction with which Duff delivers the information. And then, yes, there are others, the critics – aka the vocal majority in the social sphere of golf – many of whom see Duff as a stain not only on the game, but also on society in general, the cringey embodiment of employing AI just to employ AI.
“>
Here’s one thing we can all agree on: Duff won’t be putting Trevor Immelman out of a job anytime soon. And that, Sidlo will tell you, is not even Duff’s intention. The agent is not designed to replace humans, says Sidlo, it is intended to complement them, serving as a resource that can recall intelligence at a rate with which even the strongest golfers could never compete. “Duff has a sixth sense of memory,” Sidlo told me.
It became clear before the first live round of the New Mexico Open when, in real time, Duff scanned his databases, crunched some numbers and told Burr and Begay that two-time Utah Open winner Blake Tomlinson had an 11% chance of winning this week. A few minutes later, Duff rejoined the broadcast and shared another instructive nugget: Given the course’s high desert setting, this week’s drives carry 9 percent farther than at sea level. Duff’s pothole breakdowns were also informative, if not enlightening.
But Duff also wasted little time in showing his flaws, aside from the offensive three-second delays before all of his answers and, on at least a couple of occasions, talking about one of his stand-mates. “Duff Foreman’s limited appearances make him seem like the MS-DOS version of AI,” media critic Matt Yoder. he wrote about it Terrible announcement. “They all seem like pre-planned segments that are poorly executed and offer little substance.”
When, about 30 minutes into the first broadcast, Burr asked Duff how he defends the course when the wind is down, Duff mentioned the firmness of the greens and how balls can “jump” off the hole, an observation that omits a key detail.
“Duff certainly didn’t know we had some rain last night,” Begay said, calling out his partner’s oversight. “But under normal conditions, yes, Duff is right.”
There were still glitches in Duff’s coming-out party — first, because the AI is imperfect, and second, because, well, a machine has never called a live sporting event. Among Duff’s other hiccups in the first two rounds: being unable to quote long driver Maurice Allen’s average driving distance, a standard question Duff should have been able to answer without a problem. Early in Round 2, Duff also stumbled when Burr took him with this lead-in:
“Now at 11, (Javier) Delgadillo, his second, so he will have 4 feet for par to save here at the very challenging par-3 11 – 222 yards today, Duff.
Duff missed the invitation, leading to the awkward dead air and the production team cut to a shot of the mountain bottom of the course.
“Well, the mountains here are spectacular,” Burr said. “Hey, Duff, why don’t you take a – that’s a lot of work for you. Take a minute here, hydrate yourself, maybe grab a granola bar or whatever you AI people eat, and we’ll see how it goes.”
To which Duff said, “I’m going to take a quick break to recharge my circuits, Ryan. I’ll be there and ready to come back the moment you need some fire in the cabin.
Duff, like all AI agents, isn’t magically pulling information out of thin air. It is based on a number of existing data on the web and computing in real time the best to package and present those data. “We leveraged all the different sources on the Internet about golf, but we also built custom data,” Sidlo said. “(Duff) can rationally think about these things. He can analyze the numbers on the fly. He can provide analytics on how to play a hole on the fly, and so it’s dynamic, and that’s sports. It’s a dynamic medium. He’s not reading a script.
“We look at a lot of different databases, like BlueGolf and others, Perplexity, Claude. We have Gemini. We have a lot of links to a lot of databases. We find out and scrape data from sources that provide information about – in this event from the PGA (of America) and its records, and from the USGA that provides a lot of things about the rules and how the courses are played, what are the course conditions, what are the weather conditions. affects the grass and the speed of the grass and all these different things come into a composite response that Duff can provide as a contextualization of that moment.”
Sidlo described at least some of Duff’s interactions with Burr as “jokes,” which might just give you pause. jokes it’s a verbal volley, an improvised back and forth, but Duff is programmed to speak only when asked. This will be one of the biggest challenges if AI is to become a significant part of sports broadcasting: making its observations and insights feel authentic and truly additive. Agents cannot visit with players on the range before a round or hit putts on the greens to test their speed or say what it feels like to stay on an 8-footer with a major title in the balance. Agents can only process, organize and provide information that has already been gathered from other sources.
Sidlo acknowledges Duff’s limitations, but still sees plenty of upside. “It’s not exactly the same kind of emotional feeling as Notah,” he said. “But he provides data and analytics on the fly, and he can look at things and remember things that most people could never put together in a flash of a second in a rational context. That’s what’s unique about Duff.” Sidlo added: “It is a democratization of information about the very complex game that you can now learn. I see that as a type of experience with a lot of added value for the golf customer.
Duff’s applications could extend beyond the stand, which is in the plans of Gopher Hole Productions. Patrick Pharris, who is an investor in the company, told me that he and his partners see that Duff also has the potential to serve everyday golfers as a virtual caddy or swing instructor, or integrate the technology into golf simulators.
Duff, his supporters say, will also only improve with time as he continues to train on the nuances of the game. That training will be especially helpful in Duff’s ability to analyze swings, Sidlo said. “Every time we put in a new one, it adds to their ability to perform,” he said. “Duff is an engine of this mass compound combination that will teach (golfers) how to drive a golf club better than any other person because he has all the knowledge.”
We will see. Duff still has a lot of work and convincing to do, and it will not be easy to convert in a game so closely bound by tradition. Then again, the future is here, as dystopian as it may sound to some. The AI base is only growing, and golf watchers have no choice but to get on board.
“We believe this is just the beginning,” Sidlo said. “We’re pretty excited about the developments and the speed at which they can happen.”
