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WOODMONT, Md. — Tyler Cashman shares the news with a startling deadpan: He’s just fired his caddie.

“To come and do it at this level, you have to have someone that you can trust and depend on,” Cashman says, pausing for a beat before delivering the knockout blow. “…I’m still looking for that.”

Five feet away, Cashman’s caddie rolls his eyes.

“You fire me five times a round,” the looper says, a neon-green bib over his shoulders. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

The unspoken truth is that Tyler’s caddie has enviable job security. Not only is George Cashman a vital role player at this week’s U.S. Adaptive Open here at Woodmont Country Club but he’s also Tyler’s grandfather.

“I mean, that yardage on 1 was terrible,” Tyler says, grinning.

“Let’s go back out there right now and check it with the laser,” George snaps back playfully. “And then we’ll both know that I’m right.”

Suddenly, it hits Tyler that he might want to drop the act, because Grandpa George might actually be right.

This is a possibility that Tyler, who is 23, has had to contend with more than he would like in his formative years as a knucklehead boy growing up in Tewksbury, N.J. Not just because he is unusually close with the members of his support system but also because those people are his lifeline. Their jobs are varied and almost always mundane: introducing people to Tyler, clearing obstacles in his path, helping him get from one place to another, sparing him from small embarrassments like trips and forgotten faces and, yes, caddying. And yet there is an unmistakeable tenderness in their mundanity, a kind of autonomous empathy and strident protection among Tyler’s inner-circle that can arrive only from a place of deep, unconditional love.

The world has not always been kind to Tyler. In elementary school, he saw more doctors and specialists than most will see in a lifetime, and most of them produced little more than a shrug. In middle school, he learned he would have to stop participating in his favorite activity — baseball — because it was too dangerous. In high school, the athletics department needed to be compelled to afford him the small dignities legally afforded to him by the USGA.

“You feel like a terrible mother,” says Casey Cashman, Tyler’s mother. “And then you think, I’m the lucky one. I can fight for him. What about all the parents who can’t?”

George Cashman does not say it, but his work as a caddie is about more than quality time with his grandson. It’s about protecting Tyler from that — about making sure that he never lives a day experiencing what it is like to be less than on account of his differences.

This is what makes Grandpa George’s job so essential: It’s hard enough to be a tournament golfer without a caddie.

But it’s damn-near impossible when you’re blind.

BEFORE HE WAS A GOLFER, Tyler Cashman was a traveler.

Tyler’s grandparents, Cindy and George, had always planned to travel in retirement. But once doctors discovered Tyler suffered from a rare genetic condition that caused the slow degeneration of his eyesight, that plan shifted into overdrive. Now Cindy and George weren’t just enjoying their golden years, they were locked in a race against time.

“We wanted to fill up his memory bank,” says Tyler’s grandmother, Cindy, recounting the globetrotting trips with her grandson that filled many of his early years. “That’s what the doctor told us to do, before his vision went away.”

As it turned out, Tyler’s memory bank filled with more than just beautiful places. He forged a close bond with both of his grandparents, two old-fashioned heads of family who showed love through laughter … well, mostly.

“He really became like our fourth child,” Cindy says. “We weren’t afraid to set him straight, but mostly we just loved our time with him.”

On one of those early trips George first suggested golf to his grandson. Grandpa George was a diehard, playing five times a week in retirement after a long career at a railroad-equipment company, but more than that he was a realist. If Tyler’s vision was going to continue declining, which was what most doctors predicted, George figured his grandson ought to find an outlet that he could pursue even after he’d crossed the threshold into blindness.

George had read up about adaptive golf and knew that Tyler would be able to play no matter what happened to his vision, and under certain rules from the USGA, he would even be afforded certain rules courtesies that would allow him to compete against able-bodied players.

Tyler finally picked up the game in 8th grade, and quickly realized he had an aptitude for it. He started playing on his high school team, and later began competing in adaptive events. The experience of being on the course was enthralling, but the real joy came from what golf did for his sense of self.

“Tyler has developed an incredible sense of hearing, which is normal for blind people,” George says. “What’s interesting is that when they would play individual matches . . . he would be able to hear his competitors whisper, ‘Do you realize you got beat by a blind kid?’ That happened all the time. That was just so inspiring to him.” 

Grandpa George caddied everywhere he could, obsessing over the tiniest details of his grandson’s game and beginning a (now longstanding) tradition of matching his attire with Tyler’s at every event.

It wasn’t long before the pair had formed an inseparable bond — as family, as friends and, later, as equals.

“When he first started, he had his own idea of how he wanted to play golf. I had a different idea,” George says, grinning again. “He’s more aggressive than I am, and back then I would overrule him – ‘No, no, this is what we’re gonna do.’ Now, as he’s grown, he’s the player, it’s his score, it’s not my score. So we defer to him.”

Tyler’s sight has stabilized. After a stem-cell treatment, his vision loss has held steady for more than two years at less than 5 percent in one eye and less than 20 percent in the other. On the course, that stability has manifested in a staggering degree of success for the player-caddie duo.

“We’ve been all over the world for golf,” George says. “We won the world championship in Canada last year — that makes Tyler the number one player in the whole visually impaired [golf] world.”

But it also makes Grandpa something, too. He plays a major role in Tyler’s success, fixing his grandson’s alignment, tracking his balls in the air and filling in the gaps that Tyler otherwise can’t see. He treats the work with all the seriousness of a veteran Tour caddie.

“He missed their first U.S. Adaptive Open start a few years ago because he needed a knee replacement, so one of our friends stepped in,” Cindy says. “Well, our friend checked his phone after the first round and he had pages of notes from George on what to improve.”

She laughs.

“He ignored the message, which was probably good for our friendship,” Cindy says. “And George never missed another caddying assignment again.”

This week, at the U.S. Adaptive Open, the duo is shooting for the biggest prize of their collective career. Medals are awarded to the low scorers in each impairment category in the event, which, in its fifth year, is the biggest in adaptive golf. A victory in the “visual impairment” category would not come with a winner’s check, but it might be enough for an even rarer achievement: quieting Tyler and Grandpa George’s banter for an evening.

On Monday at Woodmont, that accomplishment was still a ways away.

“The good shots are his, the bad shots are my fault,” George says.

“Yeah, pretty much what I can do in spite of you,” Tyler says.

“Exactly,” George says. “We make a good team.”

Grandpa George is kidding, as he usually is.

But there’s a part of him that isn’t — a part that comes out after Tyler turns his attention back to the scorer’s table.

“I enjoy caddying for him more than I do playing,” George says. “For most people, golf is a thing you do alone. For us, it really is a team sport.”

Grandpa George does not say it, but it’s clear there is a part of him that thinks there is some good that came of Tyler’s bad break. It brought the two of them together.

“We’re a team,” he says. “We don’t want to play with anyone else.”

And yet, as the team prepares to head off into yet another evening together, the topic of job security percolates again.

“How many times do you think you’ll fire me tomorrow?” George asks.

Tyler’s reply comes quickly.

“I don’t know, probably every hole.”

The author welcomes your thoughts at james.colgan@neatly-delicate-grub.edgecompute.app.

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This content was first published in Golf Journal, a quarterly print publication exclusively for USGA Members. To be among the first to receive Golf Journal and to learn how you can ensure a strong future for the game, become a USGA Member today.

***

Golf is not a game that tests players based on what they’ve lost, or how they got here; it only asks what they can do in the moment. It measures adaptability, execution and resolve without regard for background or circumstance.

At the U.S. Adaptive Open Championship — which this year is being held at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Md., from July 6-8 — that standard is reinforced through a competitive structure that groups players among their peers, with outcomes earned through performance. 

Each year, the USGA accepts hundreds of applications for the championship from around the world. In 2024, the association introduced qualifying events in the U.S., allowing players an additional pathway to the championship. Eligibility is confirmed by medical assessors who assign a WR4GD Pass — the criteria and standards of which are closely aligned with those of the International Paralympic Committee. 

The USGA uses eight distinct impairment categories to determine the field of 96 professionals and amateurs, then collaborates with medical assessors from the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab to ensure appropriate placement of tees and hole locations. The categories in which prizes are awarded (along with an overall men’s and women’s champion) are as follows: 

Coordination Impairment: Players have one or more movement disorders that affect the central nervous system’s structure and function. 

Intellectual Impairment: Players have a restriction of general mental functions. Requires a WR4GD Pass and Virtus II1 eligibility. 

Lower Limb Impairment: Players have impairments affecting the leg, hip and/or spine. 

Multiple Limb Amputee: Includes players with limb deficiency in more than one limb. 

Seated Players: Players who make every stroke from a seated position because that is the only way they can play based on their impairment. 

Short Stature: Players have reduced height due to congenitally or developmentally reduced length of the bones of the upper and lower limbs (and may also have reduced trunk length). 

Upper Limb Impairment: Players have impairments affecting the arm, shoulder and/or spine.  

Vision Impairment: Players have reduced or no visual function even when using the best possible refractive or optical correction.  

These impairment categories are designed to create equity at the U.S. Adaptive Open. The championship, now in its fifth year, brings players together to compete among their peers and strives to ensure meaningful competition in which results are determined by performance, not circumstance. 

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SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Four of golf’s governing bodies released a joint statement Wednesday morning acknowledging plans to collaborate more than ever as they manage distance in the sport. In a rare display of harmony, the USGA, R&A, PGA Tour and DP World Tour all endorsed a shared path forward, shifting the approach on altering equipment used in the sport.

While the USGA and R&A have, for years, been working toward a rollback of the golf ball — proposing testing standards of how far a ball can fly via certain launch conditions — Wednesday marked the first time the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour stood alongside them.

Following recent meetings, the statement confirmed that, instead of a golf ball rollback arriving in phases — 2028 for professionals and 2030 for other golfers — a single-date implementation of January 2030 is best for all parties. The statement also suggested that changes implemented on that January 2030 date will likely require more than just restrictions on golf ball launch. It could involve the shape of drivers and/or the thickness of a driver-face. It could involve rigid bifurcation of equipment between pros and ams. But on the eve of the U.S. Open, the statement now leaves the distance debate in a bit of limbo. The runway for definitive decisions has officially been extended and the parameters of what’s possible widened.

“The R&A and USGA will take the appropriate amount of time to assess a range of possible options and determine the path forward,” the statement reads. “Specifically, the governing bodies will work closely with key stakeholders — including the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and their respective members — to review, test and implement options that have a meaningful impact on distance at the elite level. These efforts will ensure the elite game does not become too one-dimensional while continuing to emphasize the importance of shotmaking.”

Until this point, the PGA Tour (as well as many of its leading players) has cast doubt on the original, proposed rollback. It was during commissioner Jay Monahan’s 2023 return to work (following medical leave) that he declared the Tour could not support the Modified Local Rule the USGA set forth.

After years of silence in the background of bigger golf wars, the debate roared up behind the scenes in 2026. Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley delivered a forceful defense for a rollback at his annual press conference in April, and Cameron Young was reported to be playing a golf ball that would conform to the USGA’s future specifications in May. Young is one of the top drivers in the game, and said at the PGA Championship that he did not notice much loss in distance — leading many to question if the proposed rollback would create its intended result. Or if the new standards would create varied losses of distance for different players, rather than a uniform change across the board.

Following the PGA Championship, the PGA Tour began quietly surveying its members for their thoughts on the distance debate, which was certainly a surprise to some at the USGA. The 13-question survey polled players for their thoughts on the chief reasons for distance increases over the years, and if it is even a problem at all for the sport. It also asked players if the Tour should have its own rule-making process, rather than those laid out by the USGA and R&A.

Not long later, USGA CEO Mike Whan spent Tuesday of the U.S. Women’s Open across the country in Dublin, Ohio, at the Memorial Tournament, where he met with the 16-player Advisory Council on this topic. Whatever took place in that meeting clearly had some effect on the proceedings, leading to Wednesday’s sudden announcement. Whan then held a press conference Wednesday morning, clarifying the USGA’s future plans.

Whan called himself a “glass half full” kind of guy, optimistic that recent conversations have allowed all (or most parties) to feel like they’re at the same table. But he clarified that the original proposal may not have ultimately been significant enough. That asking every golfer — pro, am, manufacturer or governing body — to accept some limits would be a “small, digestible bite” for the entire industry. But he also was keen to remind those listening that it wasn’t long ago that the USGA felt resistance from the leading tours. With the promise of greater synergy, in theory at least, Whan said various changes that had previously been dropped from consideration, like the idea of bifurcation, could be up for reexamination.

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SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Everybody as ASU (Alabama State University) knows — how do we say this in a gentle way? — that Osiregbeme Egbakhumeh is a little . . . different. Consider his get-to-know-me info sheet on the ASU golf team’s website. When asked for his favorite class, the dude listed . . . Pre-Calculus!

“Yes, they made fun of me,” Osime, said Tuesday afternoon in a phone interview, speaking of his fellow Hornets. He is 20, a native Nigerian, a rising junior at Alabama State and an intern in an ongoing 10-day USGA internship program called Pathways Discover, which gives college students from all walks of life, and sometimes unexpected ones, a crash course in this-is-how-we-do-it USGA fun. (This training comes in the wake of the initiation of Pathways Launch, which kicked off at the U.S. Women’s Open at Riviera earlier this month with 24 students starting a three-month internship program.)

But Osime is likely to have the last laugh here, at the Alabama State campus in Montgomery and way beyond it. For one thing, he’s a computer information systems science major — mad math skills required! Also, Osime’s favorite golfer (in a three-way tie with Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy) is Bryson DeChambeau, the two-time U.S. Open winner and, before leaving SMU to turn pro, a physics major. DeChambeau surely knows, as Osime notes with casual ease, that calculus is the study “of change and motion.” Well, what is golf if not change and motion? The change and motion of the backswing versus the downswing, Osime explained, along with the launching of a golf ball, optimizing spin rates and all the rest.

Osime has found a practical application for his studies. As a freshman, his stroke average was just over 79. As a sophomore, he cut two shots off it. Who knows what his junior year will bring? He loves watching DeChambeau’s YouTube videos in which he tries to break course records on his first visit to a golf course. “I enjoy seeing how he processes the challenges the course presents,” Osime said. There’s a wonderful and uncommon formality to his speech.

Osime grew up in Lagos, the economic capital of Nigeria and one of the most crowded cities in the world, with a population well over 15 million. His father is a lawyer, and his mother is a former bank employee. (He described his family as middle class.) He graduated from high school with a stellar GPA, as the captain of his track team, the co-captain of his soccer team — and the only golfer in his class of about 80 students.

At 16, Osime started dreaming about going to an American university. He offered a profile of himself on a portal for students from across the world trying to find their way to America. Quincy Heard, the golf coach at Alabama State, an historically Black university, started recruiting Osime via the magic of the internet and modern global communication, with its uncanny ability to shrink the world. No senior spring college tour for Osime. The first time he came to the United States was to matriculate at ASU.

He’s loving life here. As part of the Pathway program, Osime is one of about two dozen young people who, starting last week, have been working behind the scenes at this U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. Osime is working in the ticketing office. After several days here last week, the whole gang boarded a bus and went to New York City for a couple of nights, staying in Times Square and seeing the sights.

On Tuesday afternoon, Osime kindly made himself available for this GOLF.com interview as the group prepared itself for a trip to Yankee Stadium to see Judge and the boys take on the Chicago White Sox. Then the interns will return to Long Island and Shinnecock Hills, staying in dorms at the Southampton campus of Stony Brook University.

Osime is aware of Nigerian golfers trying to make it in professional golf, including Francis Epe, trying to make it to the DP World Tour, and Georgia Oboh, trying to make it to the LPGA tour. Osime, since coming to the United States, has had access to new clubs and practice facilities in ways he did not at home. So where is this young man going? Does he want to get better at golf? Yes. Does he want to have an impactful business career? Yes. Is he looking forward to Sunday afternoon when he and all the other Pathway interns will get a break and able to hike Shinnecock’s hills and take in the golf?

YES!!!

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.

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On Sunday, Los Angeles added a new Farah to walk of fame.

Her name was Farah O’Keefe, and she was making the painstakingly long walk from the 17th green to greet her teammates after perhaps the best week of her life. And though she looked every bit the terrifying superstar who’d utterly dominated Great Britain & Ireland to the tune of five points and a triumphant victory at Bel-Air Country Club, it was the fist pump after her putt fell on the 17th to win the Cup that told the whole story.

O’Keefe, a junior at the University of Texas and one of the best collegiate golfers in the world, carried the Americans to a victory at this 44th playing of the Curtis Cup — the biennial match play competition that serves as women’s golf’s counter to the Walker Cup. All week long, she looked the part of a player fresh off an NCAA individual title and a U.S. Women’s Open start … and certain to waste little time making her way to the LPGA whenever her time at Texas is up.

“It is a lot of golf. I’ve played a lot of golf in the last month and a half. It’s really kind of ridiculous, really since SECs,” O’Keefe said Saturday. “This is what I love to do, and this is my passion. Even though my body is hurting and everything is feeling kind of old, I’m still enjoying it, and I think I’m running on a little bit of adrenaline.”

In the end, she finished 5-0-0, good for top billing on an American side that featured no shortage of talented youngsters, including amateur star Asterisk Talley. O’Keefe’s Americans fended off a late Saturday charge by the GB&I with a forceful finish in Sunday Singles, winning the last six of eight matches to clinch a 13-7 victory and extending the American side’s long-running dominance in the all-important final day format. Since the Curtis Cup went to a three-day format, the Americans are beating the GB&I 46.5-23.5 in the singles session. The Americans have also won four of the last five cups.

“I think it was all about perspective,” said Talley. “You feel the adrenaline out there, so you don’t get tired too much. But when you do, you’re just like, man, it’s always great to be out here with friends and family. I think it’s great to play golf every day for a living. You always have to keep that in perspective. Not everybody gets to do that. You have to be grateful.”

In the end, there was plenty to be grateful for on the U.S. side after clinching a victory to return the Cup to American soil. Only the top-two billings on the GB&I side, Sophia Fullbrook and Patience Rhodes, managed to deliver victories on the final day as the American wave rolled in at Bel-Air, and as Farah O’Keefe was crowned as the tournament’s undisputed winner. The excitement carried all the way to the team room for the American side, which was still abuzz even as the evening rolled in to Hollywood.

“I’m so over the moon,” Jasmine Woo, another victorious American, said. “I don’t know how to feel right now.”

On Sunday evening and for the next two years at least, the answer is clear: She can feel like a champion.

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This content was first published in Golf Journal, a quarterly print publication exclusively for USGA Members. To be among the first to receive Golf Journal and to learn how you can ensure a strong future for the game, become a USGA Member today!

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. (July 18, 1896) – Golf is still in its infancy in the United States, but no one can deny that the game is developing into more than a curiosity. Courses are sprouting, and clubmakers are busy outfitting new players. With every new course laid out on these shores and every man or woman who is intrigued to take up this stick-and-ball pursuit, the Scottish game is becoming ours as well.

Further evidence of this growth was fully on display in the eastern reaches of Long Island. About 90 miles from New York City, there was great interest in the happenings at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.

Not quite two years ago, Shinnecock Hills was one of the five clubs that joined forces to form a national governing body, the United States Golf Association. Having hosted the U.S. Amateur and this U.S. Open in those championships’ second year of existence, Shinnecock Hills is now part of the USGA’s nascent history in another important way.

The fields for both events were larger than a year ago, with nearly twice as many amateurs (58) and slightly more than triple the number of Open players (35). Some days, hundreds turned out to view the proceedings at Shinnecock Hills, which was recently expanded by Willie Dunn from 12 to 18 holes and a yardage of 4,423 yards.

The layout brims with challenge, from cop bunkers to ditches to railroad tracks. More than one golfer even had the frustration of finding out that a telegraph wire is of sufficient circumference to knock a gutta percha ball from its airborne journey. And with the Atlantic Ocean so close, the course can feature the winds of a British links, too, the kind that can perplex a player and stain a scorecard. It blew on the morning of the Open after overnight rain had given way to more summer sunshine, providing players one more thing to consider on a day already full of variables with a $150 sum (the same as in the Open a year ago) going to the winner.

The recent results were a reminder that Americans must not get ahead of themselves regarding their place in golf’s competitive pecking order. Golf was, after all, invented elsewhere, where there have long been frequenters of the green. The new champions, amateur H.J. Whigham and professional James Foulis Jr., hail from abroad – Whigham is an Englishman and Foulis a Scotsman, both now settled near Chicago, where their respective trophies will sparkle until next year.

Whigham, son-in-law of 1895 U.S. Amateur champion Charles Blair Macdonald, did not face much resistance in the final match. Thirty-six holes were scheduled, but Whigham required not nearly the full allotment to defeat Bostonian J.G. Thorp, 8 and 7. To rule in the Open – 36 holes of stroke play contested on July 18, after the amateurs had held the stage through medal qualifying and a 16-player bracket – Foulis lived in tighter quarters. The professional at Chicago Golf Club, Foulis finished two rounds only three shots clear of England native Horace Rawlins, the difference-maker being Foulis’ outstanding afternoon score of 74, the championship’s low round by two strokes. For Rawlins, who works at the Sadaquada Golf Club in Utica, N.Y., it was a spirited if unsuccessful defense of the U.S. Open title he secured last year at Newport Golf Club in Rhode Island, where Foulis tied for third place.

It likely will be a very long time, if ever, before golf sees the precociousness of youth as exemplified by the late Tom Morris Jr., who won the first of his four British Opens at 17, the last when he was 21. His genius was as bright and fleeting as a comet. Most men are a little older when they solve the championship puzzle. Harry Vardon, the man from the Channel Islands from whom much is expected, who grips the club in a distinct manner that distinguishes him before he begins his backswing, won his first British Open last month at age 26. That contest, at Muirfield, might well be remembered not only for Vardon’s ascent but perhaps the farewell of a true legend. Tom Morris Sr., the Grand Old Man of Golf, who was just short of his 75th birthday and competing in his 34th Open, didn’t tee off in the fourth round after failing to break 100 to that point.

Old Tom, a four-time champion, is a link to the very origins of an open competition, one of eight men who played in the first formal gathering in 1860, at Prestwick. The new American champion, 24, is no stranger to the colossus of the links and the Home of Golf. Foulis grew up in St. Andrews, his family home not half a mile from the Old Course’s first tee. He is one of five golfing sons of James Foulis Sr., the foreman at Tom Morris’ club-making concern in the “Auld Grey Toon.” The younger Jim, as he is known to many, picked up golf pointers not only from Old Tom but other talented locals such as Bob Martin, Sandy Herd and Andrew Kirkaldy.

With a valuable introduction from Old Tom, Foulis sailed with brother Dave to the U.S. 16 months ago to become the professional at Chicago Golf Club and is fully engaged in that early citadel of Western golf, passing along his knowledge to the exuberant members. Foulis has carried on despite a terrible fire at his workshop last fall, when thousands of dollars of equipment were lost to the blaze.

Mustachioed and standing five-and-a-half feet tall with a sturdy frame, Foulis is a man of moderation who indulges in the occasional cigar, but nothing about his golf is middle of the road. C.B. Macdonald gives no quarter around his new home, but Foulis has scant other opponents at his club who force him to his limits. His skill – especially the length of his drives – has turned heads and set records around Chicago. Foulis has recorded hits of more than 300 yards when the wind and turf were in his favor. Over the Shinnecock links, some of his shots finished more than 200 yards distant from the sand-formed tee from which they were struck. Less than a month before taking the long train ride to New York, Foulis was forced to halt his preparation for about a week when a hammer slipped as he was repairing his driving club, and he was left with a bad bruise on his left hand. But it healed sufficiently to allow him to get back in harness and caused him scant difficulty on Long Island.

Before any of the 35 U.S. Open competitors teed off in the first round, trouble simmered before being smothered. A contingent of professionals protested the presence in the field of a Black player, John Shippen Jr., and a Native American, Oscar Bunn of the Shinnecock tribe, pledging not to compete if the local teenagers – both caddies at the club – were allowed to play. Theodore Havemeyer, president of the USGA, rebutted, saying the championship would go on even if the two young men were the only competitors.

Members of the Shinnecock Nation were crucial to the construction of the golf course, which takes its name from the tribe. Bunn, who as an infant lost his father in a maritime disaster off Bridgehampton in 1876, grew up 2 miles south of the course. He took to the game and became proficient at it. He was not in his best form in the U.S. Open, shooting 89-85 to finish 21st, well away from Foulis’ winning total, but his presence and promise speak to the future of homegrowns in golf. 

Shippen, the 16-year-old son of a Presbyterian minister who is cleric and teacher at the Shinnecock reservation, was an entirely different matter, strongly contending for the title. Shippen’s dedication and knack for golf have been clear to those in the Shinnecock vicinity for some time. Willie Dunn, now at Ardsley, north of New York City, took Shippen under his wing while at Shinnecock Hills, teaching him the ways of playing, club making and instructing others, to the point where he became the Scot’s assistant pro.

“He is extremely sound and devoid of eccentricity, and he is good at every point,” one observer wrote of Shippen prior to the U.S. Open. “He is a strong and sure driver, very clever in approach, and careful and skillful in putting.” That is fulfilling the whole recipe, and despite knowing some were displeased that he was playing, Shippen went out in the morning round in a pairing with Macdonald and recorded a 78, matching his best home score, which tied him for second place with Foulis, Dunn, Willie Tucker and Canadian amateur A.W. Smith, just two strokes behind Joe Lloyd. Members and his fellow caddies were round the 18th green when he finished to cheer his fine play.

Features

Insiders Only Beastly and beautiful, Shinnecock Hills is a perfect exam for golf's ultimate test

By: Michael Bamberger

Shippen was steady through the first stages of the second round too, strongly teasing the prospect of an American-born champion. That hope evaporated, though, on the 13th hole, not a particularly difficult two-shotter. Favoring the right side, Shippen hit his shot too far right, the ball finishing on a sandy road from which he had great difficulty escaping. He ended up with an 11, shot 81 and finished in a tie for sixth, seven strokes behind Foulis.

Many had been looking forward to watching professional Willie Park Jr., two times champion of The Open in his home country of Scotland (1887, 1889). Last year, the Musselburgh man had captured the fancy of those on this side of the Atlantic during a series of challenge matches, the Shinnecock links among his stops across the Northeast. Superb on the greens, Park lost but one encounter during his tour, complementing his peerless putting with remarkable power, including some of the longest drives yet struck in the brief history of golf in the United States. Shinnecock had been interested in hiring Park as its professional, but it could not be worked out.

Further heightening the keen anticipation among Americans of once again witnessing Park was the publication, just months ago, of “The Game of Golf,” the first book of instruction by a playing professional who had taken up the pen. And quite the primer it is, the volume fairly overflowing with Park’s specific and expert thoughts about a broad range of topics. One reviewer in his native land said Park “beats all his predecessors with as much ease as he had thrashed many an opponent on the links in his time.”

Park was immersed in golf from a young age; his father, Willie Sr., won the inaugural 1860 Open among his four titles and his uncle Mungo was champion in 1874. Willie Jr. has finished no better than joint fourth since his 1889 victory, and he tied 14th in last month’s Open at Muirfield, won by Vardon in a playoff over J.H. Taylor. Perhaps Taylor was fatigued following his long week at the championship, but Park nonetheless defeated him shortly thereafter in a 72-hole challenge for 100 GBP.

From pedigree alone, Park surely was expected to factor on Long Island. He was entered, and it was said he would be present by July 5. As the Shinnecock proceedings grew near with no sightings of the star, however, his presence seemed in doubt. Indeed, he didn’t arrive in New York City from Liverpool on the Cunard steamship RMS Umbria until shortly before 11 o’clock on Saturday evening, by which time all that remained of the second U.S. Open were toasts for the champion and regrets from those he vanquished.

Having missed out on the championship action here, Park will be eager to take on all comers in match play. No doubt he will be extremely eager to see what kind of purse can be on offer if James Foulis were to agree to a head-to-head contest. What a match that would be!

As the Umbria steamed toward the dock in lower Manhattan, too late for Willie Park’s purposes, the handsome Shinnecock Hills clubhouse, designed and expanded by Stanford White – who counts Madison Square Garden and the Washington Square Arch among his architectural achievements – was abuzz with satisfaction. The USGA was delighted with its host, the club earning a cup of its own from the governing body for the ways in which it greeted the golfers and those who watched them from the clubhouse veranda and its environs, set high on a bluff facing the ocean to welcome the sea breeze.

The men were center stage for these twin championships, but women have been a big part of things at Shinnecock Hills since its founding five years ago. Representing the club in the inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur last fall, Mrs. Charles S. Brown (the former Lucy Barnes) claimed the trophy. Among those taking in the action last week was a young woman to keep an eye upon should she decide to test the competitive waters in this year’s ladies’ championship in three months. Beatrix Hoyt – whose mother, Janet, was an original Shinnecock Hills shareholder – just celebrated her 16th birthday. Like Shippen, who acquitted himself so admirably but for one tragic hole, she is ready to test herself.

There is talk that the 1897 U.S. Open might go to Chicago Golf Club, where Foulis would be a formidable defender indeed, but that is 900 miles and a year away. For now, thoughts are with the golf just played and an imported game on the bounce to bigger and better days.

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This content was first published in Golf Journal, a quarterly print publication exclusively for USGA Members. To be among the first to receive Golf Journal and to learn how you can ensure a strong future for the game, become a USGA Member today!

Few sports create space for connection quite like golf. Over several hours and 18 holes, players walk together, talk together and experience the highs and lows of competition side by side.

That same spirit extends well outside the ropes.

At the U.S. Open, the fan experience is powered not only by technology, but by the people behind the technology — hundreds of professionals including USGA staff, vendors and partners with wide-ranging expertise, working in lockstep toward a shared goal: delivering an unforgettable championship for fans on site and around the world.

A golf course is unlike almost any other environment when it comes to technology. The infrastructure must be designed, built and operated from the ground up. Then come the digital arteries: miles of network cabling that connect everything from leaderboards to ticketing, WiFi and mobile services. And we do it carefully – routing around heavy equipment, golf course maintenance crews and even the occasional curious gopher — through secure, resilient pathways designed to perform under the pressure of championship week.

This year, we are taking that resiliency even further.

News

4 incredible U.S. Open qualifying stories you missed

By: James Colgan

Our network design now provides multiple internal paths to critical locations throughout the property, ensuring greater reliability and faster recovery should issues arise. For the more than 200,000 fans who will attend the U.S. Open, this means a more reliable digital backbone that supports true “street-to-seat” convenience: faster entry, smoother transactions and a fully connected experience from arrival to final putt.

Speed and capacity matter, too.

In partnership with Cisco, we are expanding WiFi 7 technology across key areas of the championship. These next-generation access points deliver connection speeds up to four times greater than previous generations and are designed to perform in the most densely populated environments.

All this infrastructure sets the stage for what fans ultimately experience through the USGA mobile app. This year, the app will employ artificial intelligence to deliver a truly personalized “Your U.S. Open” experience. Fans will be able to follow their favorite players more closely, receive AI-driven insights and watch video highlights intelligently clipped and curated to match their interests.

In the end, the most important network at the U.S. Open isn’t measured in bandwidth or latency, but in trust. Championship week is intense, unforgiving and relentlessly real-time – there is no pause button when the gates open and the crowds arrive.

When technology performs seamlessly, it’s because teams across disciplines are communicating clearly, supporting one another and responding as one. Just like the game itself, delivering a U.S. Open experience is about connection.

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The post 4 incredible U.S. Open qualifying stories you missed appeared first on Golf.

ROCKVILLE, Mary. — U.S. Open final qualifying is definitionally a test of pain tolerance.

It is supposed to wear down your senses, to provide body blow after body blow, to bludgeon you right down to your last nerve.

The nickname “golf’s longest day“ does not come lightly for those tasked with enduring it. Thirty-six holes, often in the heat, and very often with a field full of competitors looking to tear your guts out: These are the stakes that wean thousands of U.S. Open hopefuls into the final 43 spots of a 156-player field.

They are also the stakes that annually provide some of the best stories in golf — stories of underdogs and new stars; of first-timers and old hats; of nobodies and somebodies battling against an uncaring scorecard.

These are the stories that make me love golf. And on Monday at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Maryland, they are the stories that I chased from up close, taking in my first-ever U.S. Open final qualifying day from up close.

Below are some of the best stories I saw, heard and found.

1. Ben Kohles’ marathon

It was not hard to imagine being Ben Kohles just after sundown on Monday at Woodmont Country Club. You could practically see the exhaustion on his face.

On golf’s longest day, Kohles was the golfer who had golf’s longest day. Not by the letter of the law — that honor would belong to Andrew Putnam and Spencer Tibbitts, who played six playoff holes Monday evening before darkness pushed the end of their playoff into Tuesday morning. But certainly by the letter of his frequent flyer miles.

Kohles won the Korn Ferry Tour’s BMW Charity Pro-Am Sunday evening in Greenville, S.C. He hopped in the car almost immediately after his trophy photos and narrowly caught his flight from Charlotte to D.C. He arrived exhausted but undaunted in time for his 8:32 a.m. Monday tee time, and then played some of the best golf of his year to advance into the U.S. Open for just the second time in his 15-year pro career.

I found him near scoring shortly after he’d received his medal and invitation from the USGA, the elation still fresh on his face.

“I feel like my head is still spinning,” he said. “It’s easily the craziest 24-hour stretch of my golf life.”

He wandered off into the evening not long after sharing a mile-wide grin with his family on FaceTime. It was only 8 p.m., but it was already time for bed.

2. Logan Reilly’s all-time week

Six days ago, Logan Reilly ended his Auburn Tigers’ 2026 season with a birdie putt on the 18th hole to win the NCAA title. On Monday, he ended his U.S. Open qualifying efforts with a par on the last to secure a spot in his first major championship at Shinnecock Hills.

“Yeah, it’s definitely the best week of my life,” Reilly said Monday evening.

And he might not be speaking in hyperbole. Reilly’s family has roots on Long Island, and he attended the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock as a fan. Many of his dad’s friends were already expected in attendance throughout the week for the 2026 national championship — and now they’ll have a hometown hero to support.

3. Jake Sollon’s changed plans

The first hint that Jake Sollon might be the man to beat in a two-for-one playoff for the final qualifying spot at Woodmont arrived before the playoff even started. It was on the 18th hole, Sollon’s 36th of the day, when the 28-year-old pro scared the hole on a 50-footer for birdie that would have won him the spot outright.

The odds of that putt landing were delusionally small, maybe less than half-a-percent, but Sollon seemed pissed when it didn’t fall.

“I wanted that one so badly,” Sollon said with a grin afterward. “I was talking to [fellow pro] Cory Crawford before the round, and he made a 50-footer on the last a few years ago to qualify. We wanted to replicate that.”

Instead, Sollon headed back to the 6th hole for a playoff with Lee. Lee went first on the par-3, hitting a safe approach that just trickled over the spine of the green and left him about 40 feet for birdie. Sollon went second, dropping a dart from 160 yards that landed directly next to the flagstick and stayed there — a near-ace on his first playoff swing.

When Lee’s birdie putt missed, Sollon was left with eight inches for a birdie to win it.

“I’ve never been that scared over an eight-inch putt in my life, but it fell,” he said after.

“I was supposed to fly to Bogota, Colombia for a PGA Tour Americas start,” he said. “”I’ve never been so glad to cancel a flight in my life.”

His playoff victory gave him his first-ever major championship start, and a trip up to Shinnecock to start prepping for next week.

4. Landon O’Hara’s epic entry

It was not hard to spot the youngest player in the field at Maryland’s final qualifying stop. Sixteen-year-old Landon O’Hara looked as if he had stumbled right out of high school and onto the practice range. And as it turned out, he had.

O’Hara is a rising sophomore in high school. This was his first stab a final qualifying. He made it through local qualifying after one of the wilder stories of this U.S. Open season. As O’Hara’s dad told it, his son’s even-par round ended early in the day — so early that Landon decided to head home for a few hours. A normal high school day ensued, including several hours of studying for his AP exams, before O’Hara got the call: his even-par score was holding as one of the best of the day, and it was time to head back to the course in the event of a playoff.

Seven hours after his initial round ended, O’Hara returned back to local qualifying for a one-hole playoff, which he won, earning him a spot at final qualifying.

He failed to make it into the U.S. Open on Monday at Woodmont, but there’s little doubt the experience will serve him well in future years (and maybe also on those exams, too!).

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This content was first published in Golf Journal, a quarterly print publication exclusively for USGA Members. To be among the first to receive Golf Journal and to learn how you can ensure a strong future for the game, become a USGA Member today!

The Riviera Country Club sits on the periphery of Los Angeles and yet feels as if it doesn’t belong to any city at all.

Step onto the canyon floor and the skyline vanishes behind eucalyptus trees and steep slopes. The noise of the Westside fades. Pacific breezes drift through the corridor of trees. In the late afternoon, when shadows stretch across the fairways, the place feels less like an L.A. landmark than a pocket preserved in time, an amphitheater built for golf.

That’s why the U.S. Women’s Open Presented by Ally at Riviera feels strangely inevitable, even if this is all new to the venerable venue.

From June 4-7, Riviera will host the U.S. Women’s Open for the first time, bringing the best players in the game to a venue synonymous with championship test, tradition and shotmaking. The timing is ideal in one sense: Riviera celebrates its centennial this year, having opened in 1926.

The timing is complicated in another sense. The championship arrives in Pacific Palisades as the community is still recovering from devastating wildfires in January 2025. Rebuilding does not end when a champion lifts a trophy. Riviera was spared. Much of what surrounds it was not.

The event unfolds at the intersection of those realities. Yes, it’s the first Women’s Open at a timeless course. It’s also a communal marker in the wake of catastrophe. The week is about golf at its highest level, but also about what big events can mean to a ravaged place. It gives people a reason to return, to gather, to see familiar faces and feel the comforting shape of normal life again, even briefly.

Riviera’s appeal begins with its land. Famed architect George C. Thomas Jr. laid the course into a canyon carved by an ancient riverbed that once ran from the Santa Monica Mountains to the Pacific. The terrain slopes subtly toward the sea, and that gentle pull shapes everything, from how balls react when they land to how putts drift when your eyes insist they shouldn’t.

It’s a theater, too. The course sits low, making the hillsides on the property’s edge feel like balcony seating. Players often describe Riviera as a stage because it can feel like you’re being watched even when you’re alone.

Riviera’s general manager, Jim Richerson, believes that’s part of why the course has endured and why it’s ready for this prestigious championship.

“There is something very nostalgic about the facility,” Richerson says. “The golf course has never really had any major renovations or changes. The clubhouse is the exact same footprint today as it was when it was built in the 1920s.”

There’s a modern reality to the club, with updated systems and contemporary expectations, but the architecture does still read like a classic.

“The look and feel,” Richerson says, has “somewhat of a living, breathing, almost museum-like quality … but we also try to make sure that we’re able to service the needs of the modern era.”

That balance between historic bones and living energy makes Riviera unusually telegenic. The sight lines are familiar to anyone who has watched the PGA Tour’s Genesis Invitational, which returned in February following a one-year hiatus to Torrey Pines when the community was still reeling from the fires. The holes have distinct personalities. The finish carries built-in drama.

And that matters for the Women’s Open, an event that now reaches far beyond traditional golf audiences.

The U.S. Women’s Open is not simply another stop on the calendar. It is the oldest of the five women’s majors, and has long served as the competitive standard for women’s golf.

Established in 1946, the U.S. Women’s Open was initially conducted by the fledgling Women’s PGA. When the LPGA Tour was founded in 1950, the Women’s Open already held unquestioned major stature, and is the only event recognized continuously as a major since the tour’s founding. The USGA took over the championship in 1953 and has conducted it ever since. 

Over time, the U.S. Women’s Open has mushroomed in scale and global reach. Yet it retains a defining characteristic: It is open to professionals and elite amateurs through a direct qualifying process, and the championship has a reputation for revealing the player who can withstand the most pressure and the most demanding conditions.

That’s one reason Riviera feels like such a natural fit. A championship built on history arrives at a course built on history. A championship designed to identify the game’s most complete player arrives at a venue famous for the precision it demands.

NBC will televise the championship, and although Mike Tirico will not call the event, he understands what Riviera represents.

“It’s appropriate that the crown jewel of the sport is contested at a place like Riviera,” Tirico says, “that for so many generations has come to define a great championship test of golf.

“You think about iconic holes,” he adds. “Riviera has them, from the par-3s to 10 to 18 … that claustrophobic left side of the 18th and everything falling off to the right. You close your eyes and you can think of big moments and big shots at Riv.”

That’s what the Women’s Open is poised to deliver — new moments that will mingle with the revered ones.

The test will be demanding. Riviera’s kikuyu grass can prop the ball up or bury it, grabbing the clubface and forcing vexing decisions about trajectory and spin that are all very specific to Riv. The greens can be equally perplexing. The canyon itself has a subtle gravitational pull toward the ocean, creating breaks that players sometimes sense more than they see.

Rick Sessinghaus, the Los Angeles-raised coach who works with two-time major champion Collin Morikawa, believes the setting showcases the artistry of the women’s game.

“We have the Genesis,” he says. “A lot of people are seeing top-level men’s play. But now you have the top women there as well. It benefits the growth of the game for girls to be able to be up close and see them.”

Allisen Corpuz knows Riviera from the inside. The 2023 U.S. Women’s Open champion played at USC, and in her final year there she played the course (the men’s and women’s golf programs at USC practice and play at Rolling Hills C.C.).

“As soon as you walk onto the property, it really is a special place,” Corpuz says. “From the first tee, that little downhill par 5. It’s just so well-manicured.”

She expects the course to be demanding — which, she notes, is the USGA’s calling card. “I think it’s going to play really tough, but very fair,” she says. “And I’m really looking forward to being there.”

As does Andrea Lee. The former Stanford player grew up in nearby Hermosa Beach and spent her childhood watching the Genesis at Riviera, learning the layout from the gallery ropes. She rattles off the standout holes: 10, 18, the par-3 6th with its bunker in the middle of the green. But what stays with her is something more elusive.

“You need quite a bit of knowledge to do well,” she says, noting the ocean break that tilts the greens in ways that take time to learn. “It’s one of my favorite golf courses.”

The championship carries added weight, a chance for the women to finally showcase their games on one of the most demanding layouts in the United States. The debate about whether elite women’s players are truly elite never really goes away. It lives in comment sections and locker-room wisecracks and the casual skepticism of weekend golfers who’ve never watched an LPGA event. Playing Riviera, the same course the men play, is a chance to silence the doubters.

Alison Lee, who grew up in the Los Angeles area and played at UCLA before spending 11 years on the LPGA Tour, frames it more pointedly. 

“Those girls aren’t that good,” Lee says, mimicking the refrain she’s heard for years. “They can watch Nelly Korda on TV and still say a local pro at their club could beat these players.” The Women’s Open at Riviera, she believes, reframes the conversation. Same course, same greens, similar setup. The scores will speak.

“I feel like this bridges that gap,” she says.

The USGA agrees. Julia Pine, the organization’s senior director of communications, notes that the bump in viewership the U.S. Women’s Open saw at Pebble Beach in 2023 came largely from people tuning in to watch a course they already knew. Riviera offers the same effect.

“Everyone knows what number 10 at Riviera looks like, what 18 looks like,” Pine says. “And in the process, we think they will realize that these are some of the best golfers in the world.” 

For Pine, Riviera also carries a distinction that goes beyond familiarity. “It’s almost wild to believe,” she says, “that a championship that’s been around for 80-plus years hasn’t been to L.A.”

And this is a particularly poignant time for it to happen. 

Wildfires change more than landscapes. They reshape routines, finances, schooling, friendships and a family’s sense of place. That’s why tennis great Pam Shriver, who lives in neighboring Brentwood, views the Women’s Open as both a celebration and a civic marker. The championship will take place roughly a year and a half after the fires.

Shriver, who was evacuated during the Palisades fire, has spent much of that time focused on recovery efforts. Not long after the fires, she stood near a tennis court in the Palisades and noticed something small but strangely powerful. A tennis ball sat just off the court, covered in gray ash, its Penn logo barely visible.

“I find that so moving,” she says. “The ball survived.”

The nets and fencing had burned away, but the court itself remained. The ball had endured the heat and the ash and the chaos. It sat there waiting, as if for someone to pick it up and play. There is no tidy metaphor for what the Palisades has been through, but that image — a ball on a burned court, still round, still useful — comes close.

“It’s the promise of resilience,” Shriver says.

Shriver and her friend Ilise Friedman have tried to turn that symbolism into action through Village Rising, a nonprofit working to rebuild parks, schools and sports programs damaged by the fires.

“It gets families moving,” says Shriver of the effort, “and creates a sense of normalcy.”

Normalcy has been in short supply since the fires swept through Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

“This [recovery] won’t be over when the champion is crowned,” Shriver says of the U.S. Women’s Open.

The players know it, too. Corpuz spent nearly eight years in Los Angeles before moving to Las Vegas in 2024. She has friends who were caught in the Altadena fire, including one whose family witnessed the flames from their front yard before evacuating. She hasn’t driven through the Palisades, but she’s seen enough to understand what the region has suffered.

Andrea Lee didn’t need to drive anywhere. From the deck of her Hermosa Beach home during the fires, she could see the sky go dark and the flames flickering in the distance. She has since traveled through the burn zones and found the scenes difficult to absorb. “This actually happened,” she says. “It was so catastrophic.”

Alison Lee’s fire stories are more personal. One friend, pregnant with her second child and caring for a toddler, couldn’t get back to her house after the evacuation order. Another friend’s brother, a firefighter, left for days at a time while his wife — pregnant with twins — stayed home alone managing everything. “So devastating,” Lee says, “but it’s really cool to see the community come together to help.”

Many local residents who lost their homes initially believed they were leaving for only a short time. Instead, evacuation turned into months of insurance questions, rebuilding plans and the slow realization that everything familiar had become ash.

The Palisades now feel scattered. Friends who once lived a few doors apart are spread across Southern California. Yet the sense of community persists.

Some blocks began holding Zoom reunions after the fire. Eventually, neighbors met again on the street itself, standing on their lots and trying to imagine what the rebuilt neighborhood might look like.

What stands out to the impacted residents is the juxtaposition of normal life and upheaval. In the weeks after the fire, they worked out of Brentwood Country Club, navigating insurance claims and trying to figure out what came next. Outside the window, golfers played as usual.  

The surreal contrast could have been hurtful. Instead, it was clarifying. It underscored what the Palisades is attempting now: rebuild without erasing, restore without pretending, and find moments when life feels recognizable again.

That’s where events such as the U.S. Women’s Open enter the emotional landscape. They don’t rebuild a house or resolve an insurance dispute. But they can create a reason for people to return, gather and reconnect with a place that suddenly feels harder to access.

For Riviera itself, the story of the fire is personal. Some members lost homes. Club employees watched longtime members navigate the aftermath.

“It was terrible,” says club GM Richerson. “We have a lot of long-term employees, and the members are like their family … and to see what they were going through was heart-wrenching.”

The USGA is responding in kind. For this year’s championship, the standard complimentary ticket policy for active and retired members of the military will expand to include first responders, with every one admitted free for any day of the championship. There is also a Hero Pavilion at the 17th hole, a dedicated hospitality space where first responders can watch the action from a vantage point of their own.

“Our first thought was, these first responders are truly heroes,” Pine says. “What can we do for them?”

Riviera is, without question, an admired and celebrated stage for championship golf. This time it will also serve as something else — a stage for the women’s game at its highest level and a reminder that communities do not heal on a schedule.

The champion will lift the trophy. The canyon will echo. Pacific Palisades will keep rebuilding the next day.

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The post AI can now answer your golf-rules questions — with precision and authority appeared first on Golf.

In the relative Stone Age of 2022, USGA rules expert Craig Winter was hanging out in the living room of his Washington State home with a friend of his wife’s. The acquaintance was playing around on his computer with a whiz-bang new app called ChatGPT that allowed users with no coding chops to interact with artificial intelligence through a simple conversational text box.

When Winter finally convinced his wife’s friend to let Winter ask the super-bot a question, the subject matter surely came as no surprise: the Rules of Golf, more specifically a query about cart-path relief. In went the question and out came an answer, with no less than the USGA’s senior director of rules of golf and amateur status judging its merit.

“I was candidly really surprised with how good the answer was,” Winter recalled in a call with reporters Tuesday.

After more experimenting with Chat, Winter’s wheels began turning. So did his colleagues’. Could the USGA, on the back of its expertise in the rules space, team with a tech-solutions company to create an AI-powered rules engine that was better than anything any other provider could build?

The organization weighed proposals from several potential collaborators before settling on a pitch from one of its own corporate partners — professional services firm Deloitte — that, Winter said, “showed us that there was potential that was quite a bit more than what we had on our own plate.”

This was in April 2023.

On Wednesday, the USGA announced the fruits of that partnership: the launch of the pilot phase for Rules AI, a tool that will reside in the GHIN app and, the USGA says, give golfers “an accurate, streamlined way” to find answers to their rules questions.

Simply punch in your prompt — how do yellow stakes differ from red; what’s the penalty for carrying 15 clubs; what to do if a squirrel swipes your ball, etc. — and the app will deliver how-to-proceed guidance in authoritative language culled from the Rules of Golf, the Decisions on the Rules of Golf and the trove of rules questions that the USGA answers daily by phone, email and via its rules app (more than 20,000 such queries pour in every year). In total, it’s a vast resource of rules knowledge on which Rules AI has trained itself.

For the moment, the app is available only in beta mode to a cluster of handpicked USGA member clubs, but the association has plans to expand that test group to about 80,000 or 90,000 members of New York metropolitan area clubs later this month. The app will be available to all GHIN members by the spring of next year.  

If you know anything about the USGA, you probably know it treats rules governance with the diligence of a detonation physicist handling Plutonium-239. Every word is pored over, every adjustment and amendment agonized over. So, it may come as some surprise that the USGA has entrusted the game’s commandments to a technology that while stunningly powerful also is prone to dispensing flawed information, if not outright hallucinating.

That’s where the last two years come in.

“Our approach from the very start is we need to provide accurate answers,” said Anthony Santora, the USGA’s managing director, IT, who joined the Tuesday call with Winter. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there on the internet.” Santora added that any prospect of Rules AI providing bad intel was a “non-negotiable. So, for us, we’ve been really taking this guardrail phased approach to everything.”

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At first, that meant training the engine on the 25 primary rules in the rules book, along with those rules’ many subsections. Then came a more nuanced education by way of 35,000 questions and answers from the USGA’s rules-query database. That was followed by feeding the bot real-time rules questions that golfers emailed to the USGA — with the USGA’s rules department reviewing how effectively the bot answered them. This has been an essential step in grooming the app’s intelligence. As the USGA’s rules whizzes have flagged Rules AI providing inaccurate or incomplete answers, they have been able to proactively train it to not make the same mistake again. This legwork also would make it challenging for a competitor to swoop in and create an equally reliable rules tool.      

“We’re able to continue to make this better and to be able to teach it because we’re hands on, looking at it, looking at questions coming in, and seeing answers that are coming out,” Santora said.

Week by week and month by month, the app got smarter and more sophisticated.

“I’ve spent a good amount of time dreaming about the possibility of this actually working,” Winter said, “but not really getting to that point until we were almost 16, 18 months in.”

Every potential question ladders up into one of 500 different rules topics — i.e., “out of bounds,” “cart-path relief,” etc. “When a question comes in, it’s going to ultimately land in the topic that is most similar to what this person is asking,” Winter said. “So all of that nuance is available for the system to be able to use this closed set of information that’s accurate to find the answer.”

That’s not to say Rules AI is perfect. No machine, no matter how thoroughly it has been trained, can be omniscient, especially when it comes to the Rules of Golf, where scenarios without precedent can seemingly appear out of thin air. When the app receives a question it feels unqualified to answer (and no doubt, as the app becomes more widely available, an army of fast-typing rules sharpies will revel in trying to stump the bot), it is wired to refer users to the USGA for further counsel.   

Complex questions can take Rules AI 10 seconds or more to answer but more commonly asked questions will have what the USGA calls “golden answers” that the app will deliver almost instantaneously.

Winter stressed that Rules AI should not be used to supersede tournament or club committees’ expertise or rulings; it’s more so a reference that allows players easier and faster access to rules guidance, which likely also will lower the volume of rules queries the USGA fields the old-fashioned way.

“We’re not trying to put a rules official in golfers’ pockets,” Winter said. “This is about scaling the expertise of our rules staff, our rules experts, to golf around the globe.”

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