Augusta, Ga. – Mobile phones are prohibited to masters. The prices of food and drinks are happily stuck in the 1970s – $ 1.50 for a Pimento cheese sandwich – a charming Holdover of yesteryear. And the painted rankings are updated by hand.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, it’s Jones (Bobby) Meet Jetson (George). Whir drones on T-shirt boxes. Fans around the world can follow each plan of each player – including the repressed bullets on the practice. As soon as someone ends their round, their highlights of the day are instantly compiled by the AI.
The challenge of this legendary tournament is as delicate as an out of 15 descent putt. How does Augusta National rely on emerging technologies without compromising its legendary tradition?
Be creative and you can develop the game. Be too cute and you can damage the brand.
“It’s a balance,” said Fred S. Ridley, president of Augusta National. “And it’s not always easy.”
This means moving in a mastery way, which implies here to operate so quietly and effectively that changes seem to appear as if by magic.
“We certainly want to progress,” said Ridley. “We want to try new things. We want to continue our mission to reach out and develop the game. But at the same time, we must be aware of the fact that the magic of this place is these traditions and mysticism. ”
Friday, three familiar players sought to leave their own brand on the tradition of masters. Justin Rose pulled a 71 to maintain his lead eight under the peer. BRYSON DECHAMBEAU Driven up a 68 and is a back, and Rory McILroy, who needs a green jacket to finish a big slam in a career, had a 66 to go to six sous.
“There is a bit of a feeling that the course plays a little differently today,” said Rose. “A little more Winding, for sure, in a slightly different direction. So, just trying to make some of these adjustments. I think it was a fairly favorable wind for the golf course in general, that’s why I think you see good scores.”
The scores are published by hand in the main ranking of the Masters golf tournament.
(Julia Demaoree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
In a broader sense, the winds of change to the masters have turned for some time.
Faced with Augusta National, through a tunnel under Washington Road, is the content center, nearly 90,000 square feet of colonial structures which house CBS and ESPN production teams, as well as the many media efforts that the club supervises, such as Masters.comYouTube, podcasts, social media and others. Inside, with its white lambée walls and dark oak floors, it is as luxurious and well appointed as a Hotel Four Seasons.
This house for the radio media should not be confused with the Center for other national and international media such as the Los Angeles Times and many others, which is closer to the course and in the same way.
The content center is not open to the public, but often has visitors, club guests and for a week a year, activity activities before Daybreak at nightfall. Burged at the rear are nearly 50 production trucks which form a broadcast village which has been moved from the area behind the part of the three.
Enter the ground floor of the content center and it is like entering a Tee-Time temporal chain, a Sweet-Pot Smithsonian, with photos, wall paintings, tactile screen kiosks and the soundtrack of Masters from past generations.
“The tradition is all in Augusta National – everything,” said Verne Lundquist, who covered masters for 40 years for CBS before retiring last year.
Walk in the corridor and you will find recognition of the first green jacket ceremony in 1949, a quote from Sportswriter Herbert Warren Wind when he invented “Amen Corner” in 1958, and a photo of Butler Cabin in 1965. More modern milestones such as The First Color Broadcast (1966), First Masters Sited (1996) First Streaming (2006) and First Mobile App (2009).
This wall honors famous moments on the course, of the double eagle of Gene Sarazen out of 15 – nicknamed “The Shot Heard” Round The World ” – at the fifth victory of the masters of Tiger Woods in 2019.
The main work room of Masters.com looks like a modern editorial room, with around 200 storytellers of new-aging generating all types of content during the tournament week. (The place is almost empty of the other 51 weeks of the year.) There are podcasters, video and audio production teams, photo editors, graphic designers, web publishers, a team of social media and international representatives who create equipment in Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Chinese, among other languages.
Studios for programs such as the daily “Mornings at the Masters” on the YouTube channel of the tournament of the tournament, and the podcast “Fore please!” Now Driving ”.
It is the club’s policy that no employees speak of the file, but the people who work at the content center will tell you about their development process “crawling, run” in which they will not rush to put a technology in place, but will improve it and improve it before the unveiling. For example, the Masters briefly had a Twitter account in 2009, then arrested it and refined it for several years before relaunching.
The ability to show each tournament plan was available long before the masters introduced it in 2019, but were selected to make quality improvements. The engine, says the club, is a commitment to the relevance, excellence and integrity of narration.
The big Baseball Ken Griffey Jr., in the center, speaks with the former NFL player Ryan Fitzpatrick, on the left, and a boss in the second round of the Masters. Griffey is an accredited photographer for the event.
(Ashley Landis / Associated Press)
The IBM is produced by IBM, which created a “digital twin” of Augusta National by using air surveys and analyzed nine years of tournament data, nearly a million shots, with statistical ball data and ultra-detailed modeled contours of each green.
In a few clicks on a giant video wall, someone who exploits the system can show you, for example, that Woods has never made Bogey or Eagle on n ° 13 during the nine years studied. (In comparison, Rory McILroy helped at 13 on Friday for the sixth time in his master’s career.)
On the hole video -type overall view, a user can zoom in on each flight route and the landing point for each woodenhine.
Using AI technology and this enormous sample size, as well as wind and weather data, the program can provide in a fairly reliable way which holes will play harder a given day. The predictive models are based on the field and not specific to the player. IBM says that it is because of the interest of Augusta National to remain neutral.
Technology is exclusive to demonstrations on site and not yet public, although there are discussions in progress for wider access to fans.
IBM uses AI to provide a live flow in which the best and most exciting sockets that occur around the course are broadcast online. Computers select plans partly based on the reaction on the crowd and gestures of the players, such as a pump pump or a raised putter. The same technology is used to quickly tinker with the highlights of a player who summarizes his full turn in about three minutes.
“It is a balance, and if we go back to the basics,” said Ridley, “we return to the fact that we must continue to get better, we have the obligation under our mission to promote the values and virtues of the game, and we have the obligation to respect tradition.
“So when you assemble all this, the way I look at it is that we use the technology to tell the story of who we are, to tell the story of the masters, to explain to people perhaps that – especially the youngest – what the masters are and why it matters to the golf game.”
