The Future of AI in Golf

We're in the beginning stages of AI's impact on humanity and golf companies are already trying to integrate it into their flows. From creating the next best selling golf club, to guiding you around the golf course, or building a practice plan... AI has the potential to change the way we learn and improve our golf games.

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How does the AI Caddie in TANGENT work?

Golfers have been programmed by the golf industry to focus on golf swing and mechanics. It’s at the front of almost every golf ad and product. Quick swing fixes, training aids, all so you can look like Adam Scott.

But the reality is… most golfers could knock more strokes off their game simply by learning course management and making better decisions on the golf course. Better targets, better clubs. But it’s hard to teach the masses decades of experience to learn true golf strategy… It’s much easier to train an AI. So thats exactly what we did with TANGENT. We trained an AI to be a tour level caddie.

Golf is hard… I feel like I have to say that often enough that it starts to sink in so that we can all forgive ourselves for struggling with our games, but part of why its hard is because of the human condition.

We are pre-programmed to remember and to expect our best. We tend to react to situations emotionally and with false confidence. That may help us in many situations, but golf… is not one of them. Our best golf comes when we remove biases and feelings and stick to cold hard numbers.

Let me give an example, if you asked the average golfer a simple question…

“How far do you hit your 7 iron?”

They’ll typically give you a number that is much closer to a perfect flushed 7 iron… but how many times do we perfectly flush any club? It’s less than 50% in a round for even the best in the world. Ben Hogan is famous for saying he only hit 5 perfect shots in his entire career. The truth is most of our golf shots are some degree of a mishit.

Typical shot dispersion of a low handicap player from the Round Report in TANGENT.

That same golfer that tells me they hit a 7 iron 170 yards is also likely missing the green short more often than not. So either golfers don’t know how far their clubs go, or we just like to lie to ourselves so that we feel good about our distances.

Luckily for us, we have TANGENT’s AI Caddie to correct us, but how does it work?

The caddie starts learning from the moment you download TANGENT. During onboarding you go through a series of simple questions that setup the clubs in your bag, including setting how far you think you hit your clubs and your perceived accuracy (dispersion).

This sets the baseline for the AI Caddie no different than a real caddie… And just like a real caddie, TANGENT starts learning as soon as you start playing.

The caddie tracks every shot in the background as you play and begins making predictions on what club you used, tracking how far it went, and how far it ended from the projected target.

For every shot you hit, the AI Caddie analyzes the expected outcome with every club in your bag. It takes the expected distance and dispersion of every club and simulates what might happen if you chose that club. This isn’t your flushed distance, this is the total possible dispersion for every club in your bag.

This is shown in detail in this video:

Click the image to watch a video on how the AI Caddie works.

The AI Caddie already knows the course you’re playing. It knows where the bunkers are, how wide the fairway is, hazards, etc. The AI Caddie also knows the current weather and elevation. Maybe the only thing the caddie doesn’t accurately know is the location of out of bounds.

The caddie uses this information to help you make the best club and target selection that we call ‘optimal’. You can get an idea of how this works in the below image. The yellow arcs represent your dispersion by club. Effectively, selecting that club means you need at least the width of the yellow arc to hit it safely. Anything within the yellow arc has a significant probability if you select that particular club.

The same is true of approach shots. TANGENT’s AI Caddie now puts a higher priority on vertical dispersion as well and shows you probabilities as a circle rather than an arc. The caddie does much of the work automatically, analyzing how much of the dispersion circle would have a good result versus a bad result.

For every club and potential target, the AI Caddie is calculating your expected score giving all possible outcomes. It’s not just looking at the current shot, it’s looking at the next one… and the next one until the hole is finished.

It then compares each club and target to provide an optimal suggestion and often an aggressive suggestion.

What is the difference?

Optimal: This is the target that would result in the lowest average score if you played the shot hundreds of times.

Aggressive: This is the target that has the potential for the lowest score, but also brings bigger numbers into play. It would not lead to the lowest score of hundreds of times, but has the potential to lead to the lowest score on individual shots. You have a better chance at birdie, but you will also make more doubles.

The way I look at it… You should almost always choose optimal. It’s like playing by the book at a blackjack table. Aggressive is reserved for match play situations or the last hole of a tournament when you need magic and second place doesn’t matter. You need to double down now or you’re going home.

In the latest app update, I’ve added even more ability to get the optimal AI Caddie target for any club in your bag, but the logic is the same. AI Caddie compares every possible target for that club and returns the target that would lead to the lowest scoring average.

The beauty of the AI Caddie? It’s emotionless. It doesn’t get worked up into ‘I have a window’ or ‘I just made bogey and I have to bounce back’… It just keeps stacking up good decisions that are going to optimize your score. And while its not perfect… For instance it can’t yet see how tall those trees are protecting the dogleg… It’s getting there. And its a tool that every golfer should have in their tool belt.

*AI Caddie in TANGENT requires a subscription or for round to be unlocked with credits.

Can Chat GPT Improve TANGENT?

Recently I spent some time re-invigorating the Round Report. In addition to cleaning up the graphics and flow of your post round summary walking you through the steps to game improvement, I wanted to test whether the graphics and story were truly telling TANGENT Golf users the right story. So I did what almost everyone is doing these days and turned to AI (Chat GPT).

Not every golfer is a data nerd and the concept of Strokes Gained is still foreign to many golfers, so I was curious if the presentation of the data in TANGENT was good enough for Chat GPT to offer some help to users that may not quite know what to do with data.

In a simple experiment, I used the share functionality in TANGENT to grab some screenshots to share with Chat GPT and asked it to explain what I was looking at. The results shocked me.

The prompt was as simple as could be. No context. I did not even tell Chat GPT this was golf related. I simply asked it ‘What is this graphic (above) trying to tell me?’.

This graphic appears to be a performance summary for a golf round, specifically focusing on areas where strokes were potentially lost or added. Here's a breakdown of what each part represents:

Potential Score (72): This is the theoretical score you could achieve if you minimized mistakes in key areas like putting, chipping, and penalties.

Three Putts (2): This indicates you had two holes where you needed three putts to finish, suggesting room for improvement in putting.

Two Chips (0): No holes required a second chip, meaning your chipping accuracy was consistent and effective in this round.

Penalties (2): You incurred two penalty strokes, which could be from out-of-bounds shots, water hazards, or other penalty-inducing mistakes.

Recoveries (1): You made one successful recovery shot, such as getting back on the fairway or near the green after a challenging position.

Radar Chart: The chart visualizes your performance in each of these categories. Each axis represents a different metric (three putts, two chips, penalties, recoveries), with higher values extending further out. A more compact shape, closer to the center, would indicate fewer mistakes and potentially a better score. In this chart, the largest spikes are in the “Three Putts” and “Penalties” axes, suggesting these areas had the most impact on your round.

This summary helps identify areas where you might focus your practice to reduce strokes in future rounds.

Chat GPT

I’m impressed… The graphic I created is so crystal clear that even AI could understand it without an ounce of context… </sarc> Forgive my sarcasm… But its partially true. Chat GPT just about nailed it.

But thats a lot of words. Nobody wants to read that much (hopefully you just did…). So I asked it again…

“Can you tell me again, but more concisely, what my takeaway should be to improve?”

To improve, focus on:

1. Putting: Reduce three-putts by practicing lag putting and short putts.

2. Avoiding Penalties: Work on accuracy off the tee and course management to avoid penalty areas.

These two areas had the biggest impact on your potential score.

Chat GPT

Couldn’t have said it better myself. The power of AI is amazing. It’s ability to cut through complex images to shortcut key takeaways is exactly what I’m striving to do with the logic in the TANGENT Round Report, but AI can do it for me without a single line of code. It’s pretty incredible.

But… that was the easy one. A question I get from golfers all the time is “What is Strokes Gained” and “How do I use it?” Explaining an answer involves some sort of mathematical explanation about references and the quality of shots inducing eyes blurring as their mind wanders in real time. It’s not the sexiest of things to walk through… unless you’re one of the true golf nerds like I am…

So what if I gave Chat GPT a hard one. A custom graphic that I invented just for TANGENT. It discusses a golf specific topic with nuance. A complicated interaction between different golf skills. Honestly, its one of my favorite graphics because it highights the meat of what to focus on.

What does Chat GPT make of this:

“Explain this graphic to me”

Again, all I asked was “Explain this graphic to me.”

This graphic breaks down your Strokes Gained in Driving, comparing your performance to a 0-handicap golfer, and identifies specific areas for improvement:

Overall Strokes Gained in Driving (-2.7): You lost 2.7 strokes in driving, making it a key area of weakness.

Distance (+0.8): You gained 0.8 strokes in distance, which is a strength. You’re achieving good distance off the tee compared to the benchmark.

Direction (-0.8): You lost 0.8 strokes in direction, indicating that accuracy is a moderate issue. Improving accuracy could help, but it's not the primary factor.

Mistakes (-2.7): Most of your strokes lost in driving come from mistakes (e.g., penalty shots, out-of-bounds, or poor lies). This is your biggest area to improve in driving.

Takeaway: To improve your driving performance, focus on reducing mistakes (like avoiding penalties or staying in play) rather than distance. Better course management and accuracy could help minimize large stroke losses here.

Chat GPT

Again, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Chat GPT understands context and the takeaway is exactly what I, an expert in the field, would tell you to work on based on the data.

AI is here to stay and this is just the beginning. A recent interaction with a TANGENT user takes this to the next level, which I’ll discuss in a future newsletter.

So hey, if you’re ever confused about the data from TANGENT, don’t hesitate to drop me a note at [email protected], but Chat GPT may just be the the next best thing.

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