For a tournament that boasts having pimento cheese sandwiches and “patrons” instead of fans, the Masters is surprisingly at the absolute bleeding edge of technology. For the 90th Masters Tournament approaching, the green jacket won’t be the only thing getting updated—there will be “agentic” AI to explore the history of the tournament.

The Death of the Scroll: Searching the “Vault”

For decades, fans have struggled to find specific historical moments at Augusta National. Want to find footage of a specific Tiger Woods chip from 2005 or a Ben Crenshaw putt from the 80s? There’s been no easy way to do it.

With AI from IBM, however, fans can access the Masters Vault Search. Using their Granite (small language models), the company turned 50 years of footage of the tournament’s final rounds into a searchable database.

The system uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Speech-to-Text technology to search the database for specific information. It understands the footage’s context rather than just the words on the screen. Fans can ask the AI to show legendary par saves from the 15th hole in the 1990s, for instance. The system will find and deliver those highlights to fans instantly.

“Bones” in the Machine: The Evolution of Hole Insights

Other sports stats platforms exist that show the probability of an event occurring. However, these platforms fail to consider the “soul” of the sports field. To give fans an experience that’s closer to the legendary caddies of the past, IBM included Jim “Bones” Mackay in its program.

Using the SLM watsonx platform, the Hole Insights application includes all of Mackay’s knowledge about the courses. As soon as the ball stops moving on the course, the system records the ball’s coordinates.

Using this coordinate location, the system calculates the odds of the player making specific scores using historical data from the course spots and pin placements.

Why Small Models?

The AI models created by IBM use small language models (SLMs) rather than large ones that know just about everything about sports and history. These models are better for specific tasks. They work faster, use less data, and are less likely to “hallucinate” the information needed for fans to understand a game highlight.

The 30-Year High-Tech Tradition

For the past 30 years, IBM has partnered with the Masters to create innovative technology for fans. From the first website created in the 90s to the recent launch of the Apple Vision Pro program, IBM and the Masters have worked together to innovate for fans.

From the die-hards who want to find the best stroke from 1975 to the casual fans who would like to understand why a professional golfer is struggling with a 10-foot par putt, the 90th Masters will allow fans of all ages to experience the most traditional of sports enhanced by the most futuristic of technologies.