Improving the fan experience and driving productivity
For nearly 30 years, IBM has been the digital innovation partner of the Masters, designing, developing and delivering the digital experience of the Tournament for millions of golf lovers around the world. And each year, IBM Consulting® and the Masters digital team work together to innovate, advance and improve the award-winning Masters app and website with new features that are beloved by fans and players alike.
“The Masters app is incredible,” says Tony Finau, winner of six PGA Tour events and 65 top ten finishes, include three at the Masters. “All that information is so valuable. I can’t rush to the app fast enough when I’m done playing because I want to prepare for the next day. And for the avid golf fan, I think for them to know this information, as well, is incredible.”
Finau is referring to far more than just scores and statistics. The Masters app is packed with AI-powered features that surround the competition with context and insight, giving digital patrons a better understanding about the action and golf course. For example, the My Group feature lets people see every shot on every hole by all their favorited players. The feature also uses AI to identify important moments from elsewhere in the tournament and add them to the My Group feed. There are also AI models that create the “Round in 3 Minutes” recaps, which are video highlight reels produced minutes after each player completes play. And the AI Commentary feature uses generative AI (gen AI) models, including IBM® Granite® foundation models, to add spoken commentary and subtitles—in both English and Spanish—to more than 20,000 shot videos throughout the Tournament.
One feature that Finau finds particularly useful is Hole Insights. Here’s how it works: the moment a ball comes to rest, the exact x, y and z coordinates of its landing spot are captured and compared against nine years of historical data. The AI model—built, trained and governed using the IBM watsonx® solution—then calculates the probabilities of making an eagle, birdie, par, bogey or worse from that exact spot, and generates an insight based on that analysis. For example, From this spot in the pine straw on Hole No. 13, players have a 28% chance of making a birdie.
These AI-powered features add to the richness of the Masters app, surrounding every shot with information that gets digital patrons closer to the course and players than ever before. But the best part is they do it without taxing the Masters digital team. And that’s the benefit of the Masters digital platform, supported by a hybrid cloud infrastructure, fueled by trusted sources of data and powered by productivity-enhancing AI models.
Better digital experience
Digital patrons of the Masters now enjoy real-time insights and personalized content that bring new depth to each shot and storyline.
Increased productivity
The Masters digital team benefits from AI-driven productivity tools that streamline development and reduce manual effort.
Reliable performance
With a hybrid cloud infrastructure and automated application monitoring, critical applications run smoothly across multiple environments with minimal downtime.
Inside the Masters Global Content Center at Augusta National Golf Club, there’s a room very few people have ever seen. It sits behind a wall of glass and features an immersive LED screen that’s 21 feet wide and 7 feet tall. This massive screen is built to display a stunningly realistic, interactive digital twin of the most famous golf course in the world. It’s capable of displaying historical data from more than 180,000 shots taken at the Masters over the last nine years, revealing patterns and insights unique to this tradition that’s unlike any other.
IBM Consulting built this wall to visualize one of the Masters most valuable assets: its data. Nowhere is data more integral to the player and fan experience than at the Masters. The Masters is the only golf major played at the same course every year: the Augusta National Golf Club. For nearly 90 years, in early April, the best golfers in the world take on some of the game’s most recognizable golf holes. The deceivingly difficult tee shot on Hole No. 12. The treacherous approach shot on Hole No. 11. The narrow, tree-lined drive on Hole No. 18.
Every shot, by every player, on every hole produces more than 30 data points, both structured and unstructured. There are scores, stats, videos, photos, articles, bios and more. This data is the raw material of the Masters digital experience. IBM’s job is to capture, route, process and analyze it all, transforming this massive volume and variety of data into meaningful insights on the Masters app. To do it requires a powerful digital platform.
That platform starts with the foundations, which consists of an open, flexible hybrid cloud architecture. IBM hosts Masters applications and workloads on multiple clouds in multiple locations, always choosing the best cloud for each workload. So, the team writes many of the applications on the Red Hat® OpenShift® Platform, which means they can write them once and run them on any cloud.
This architecture also allows the AI models to operate on data no matter where it resides. And the key to governing that data across multiple clouds is the IBM watsonx.data® data store, IBM’s data lakehouse. Masters data is unique, which makes it hugely valuable, but it comes from a variety of sources and trusted partners. Watsonx.data is designed to collect, curate and prepare it all for use in AI models: structure or unstructured, historical or real time, on premises, in the cloud, or at the edge.
“Watsonx.data is critical to the entire operation,” says Corey Shelton, Technical Program Director for IBM’s Sports & Entertainment Partnerships. “We know that AI-powered experiences are only as good as the data that fuels them. And with watsonx.data, we get access to all the key data sources and the confidence that those inputs are ready for processing.”
Once the data is prepared, the AI models do much of the heavy lifting. For example, AI instantly produces hundreds of “Round in 3 Minutes” highlight reels for every player after every round. Fast and efficient IBM Granite models help generate the spoken narration and Hole Insights for more than 20,000 shots. And the IBM Consulting team uses IBM watsonx Code Assistant® to accelerate their development process, generating code based on natural language prompts, analyzing existing code and facilitating better collaboration between developers.
To help ensure the entire operation runs smoothly, IBM automates key aspects of the IT operation using IBM Instana® Observability. It helps control complexity, reduce costs and minimize downtime by constantly monitoring the performance of critical applications across the Masters digital platform. The moment an issue arises the team is alerted. And often, it can automatically resolve issues on its own. And it does it across complex environments—multicloud, on premises or wherever the applications live.
“We are seeing this same formula play out with IBM clients around the world,” says Kristi Kolski, IBM Marketing Program Director of Sports & Entertainment Partnerships at IBM. “So, if you want to get a good look at the power of data and AI for business, spend some time with the Masters app.”
By combining a valuable, proprietary data with purpose-built AI models, the Masters is redefining the digital experience of golf. But it’s more than a sports story. It’s a showcase of enterprise-grade AI in action. This Masters digital platform illustrates how organizations across industries can leverage proprietary data for customer-facing innovation, scale AI solutions across cloud environments and use AI to increase productivity and accelerate time to value. And that’s better than a 40-foot birdie putt.
Since 1934, the Masters (link resides outside of ibm.com) has been home to some of golf’s greatest moments. Amidst blooming azaleas, towering pines and flowering dogwoods, the first full week of April ushers in a stage unique to golf and to sport. Over four days and 72 holes, the smallest field in major championship golf competes for a chance to capture the Green Jacket and a place in Masters history. Take a journey down Magnolia Lane or stroll through Amen Corner and explore the iconic traditions, moments and history of the Masters Tournament like never before — past and present.
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