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- Masters Vault Search accessible online and in-app
- Hole Insights has been updated for third year
- IBM and Masters have worked together for more than 25 years
IBM is applying agentic artificial intelligence (AI) technology to the Masters golf major’s video archive, allowing fans to search for iconic moments using natural language prompts in the official tournament app.
The tech giant has worked with Augusta National for more than 25 years, with the tournament a high-profile showcase for its wares. AI has become an increasingly integral part of the Masters, which is widely regarded as the most prestigious competition in golf.
Masters Vault Search is the headline addition for 2026, providing fans with a new way to interact with the tournament’s rich history. The tool is powered by agentic AI models, which are able to autonomously make decisions to achieve goals and solve complex challenges with minimal human intervention.
It combines analysis of the competition’s official database with other AI techniques, such as optical character recognition, speech-to-text transcription of audio commentary and computer vision-based scene detection.
By doing so, it can identify clips within full-length replays of more than 50 years of final round action at Augusta National to provide fans with the moment they are searching for.
IBM has also updated Hole Insights, which crunches historic and real-time data to deliver insights for every single hole across all four days. The feature, which might explain that 25 per cent of players have hit a bogey on hole 13 while 82 per cent of tee shots that hit the fairway on hole 17 have resulted in a birdie in previous years, is now significantly more accurate for each golfer.
“The Masters Tournament and IBM have continually raised the bar on unique digital experiences that blend cutting-edge technology with the timelessness of Augusta National Golf Club,” said Jonathan Adashek, senior vice president of marketing and communications at IBM. “The introduction of Masters Vault Search and updates to Hole Insights show how generative and agentic AI can transform vast amounts of data into meaningful insights – whether you’re a golf fan who wants to understand the implications of a single shot in real time, or a financial institution using AI to analyse millions of transactions to identify patterns and inform decisions.”
SportsPro says…
For more than a quarter of a century, IBM’s partnership with the Masters has united the world’s most famous golf tournament and one of the original pioneers of information technology. This combination of profile, prestige and technological capability creates a unique sporting technology sandbox that provides a snapshot of the current state of sports technology.
For IBM, which has long touted the concept of cognitive computing before the term ‘artificial intelligence’ became ubiquitous, the tournament has been an ideal testbed for its Gen AI capabilities and to demonstrate the breadth of its technology and services portfolio.
Now it is using the Masters as a showcase for agentic AI, which many regard as a third generation of the technology, building on predictive and generative AI.
With many sports properties eager to identify ways that AI can help users interact with their video archive and do so autonomously, all eyes will be on the Masters once again this spring.
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