PGA TOUR's AI writes up every shot so its digital team can cover every player
30,000+According to the PGA TOUR: commentary for every shot by every player, 30,000-plus shots per tournament. According to Scott Gutterman (PGA TOUR) in Sports Video Group: accuracy around 96% on the 30,000 shots at THE PLAYERS 2025. According to AWS: commentary within 10 seconds of each shot, 300+ data points per shot, and 40% lower model inference costs after moving to Amazon Nova 2 Lite.
“Typically, our staff can cover 25 or 30 golfers, but, with generative-AI content generation and data collected through ShotLink powered by CDW, we can tell the story of every single player.”
Sports Video Group, Mar 2025 (also PGA TOUR, Jan 2026, and AWS case study), 25 Mar 2025
- Who
- The PGA TOUR, the US-based professional golf tour headquartered in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, which also runs PGA TOUR Champions and the Korn Ferry Tour. Its digital products team (about 60 people, per Sports Video Group) runs TOURCAST, the 3D shot-tracking experience fed by ShotLink data. AI built on AWS (Amazon Bedrock), first with Anthropic Claude models, now Amazon Nova 2 Lite.
- Problem
- Each tournament has 150-plus players and more than 30,000 shots over four days, most of them never on TV. Staff could write up 25 or 30 golfers; fans following anyone else saw only yardage, distance and result. The Tour's dozens of Every Shot Live streams ran with natural sound and stats only, because putting commentators on every feed all day was not affordable.
- Agent
- A pipeline on AWS: ShotLink shot data (Trackman radar, cameras) goes through a rules-based context layer that adds leaderboard position, player stats and history, then a language model on Amazon Bedrock writes a short commentary. A separate check compares every name and number with the source data, and only matching text is published to TOURCAST, within about 10 seconds of the shot. Prompts are versioned and tested like code.
We'll build it for you
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Try it yourself with Amazon Bedrock
You help run a tennis, padel or golf tournament, or a club league. Goal: short, accurate updates for every match or round, not just the featured ones, for my team to check before posting. My input: [results and stats per match or round: players, scores, key numbers], [player notes: ranking, past results at this event], [our tone and channels], [anything we must never say]. Give me: 1) a short rule list of which facts matter most (upsets, streaks, personal bests); 2) one two-sentence update per match using only my data; 3) a check table comparing every name and number in your text with my input; 4) flags where data is missing or unclear. Never invent stats or quotes.What we can do for your club or brand
Most clubs and tournaments only have time to write up the finals or the main court, and every other match goes unreported. The Court can set up an AI workflow that turns your own scores and stats into short, fact-checked updates for every match or round, with your team approving what goes out, so every player, parent and sponsor sees their match covered and your staff keep their time for the stories that need a human voice.
What they did
After two years of experiments, the PGA TOUR's digital and broadcast technology team built data and context services around ShotLink: rules on what to mention and when (for example greens in regulation every few narratives, never "longest drive of the day" on the first tee shot), plus gold-standard example texts. It debuted at THE PLAYERS Championship in March 2025 on Anthropic Claude models via Amazon Bedrock, and was later moved to Amazon Nova 2 Lite. The same commentary now also feeds headlines and descriptions for video highlights.
How it went
The Tour now publishes commentary for every shot by every player, 30,000-plus per tournament, instead of the 25 or 30 golfers its staff could cover. At THE PLAYERS 2025, Scott Gutterman, SVP digital and broadcast technologies, put accuracy on the 30,000 shots at around 96%. AWS reports commentary within 10 seconds and 40% lower model inference costs after the switch to Nova 2 Lite. Gutterman: "Our goal is always to have a human telling the story." Limits: accuracy and cost figures come from the Tour and AWS; no audience or revenue figures are published.