AI is going to ruin golf design. Think of this…rich guy buys 200 acres and wants to build a course. Instead of trained craftsman trying to find a good routing, you import the Lidar into AI and the computer spits out 100 possible routing scenarios. Move the clubhouse to other end of property, and AI concocts 100 more. Now you simply choose the routing you like best. You might be saying, that isn’t so bad.
Now AI must place the bunkers on the rendering. It can scan Arccos data from millions of shots hit by amateurs. AI can see that the average length of tee shot for amateur golfer is 206 yards, so every bunker is placed at exactly 206 yards. AI cannot process that some bunkers should be shorter for heroic shots, some should be in the distance as aiming bunkers to frame a hole. What about different distances just to test different abilities. What about creating strategy? That’s simply too artful, and AI can only maximize based on computation. Suddenly courses are beginning to look / play the same.
Artists are weird. There is certain artful randomness to golf design. The randomness only flawed weird humans working with a unpredictable environment can attain. That’s why courses are different, play different. We don’t want courses to be designed to only maximize penalty on all the statistical averages. Weird works. Let’s hope we keep the art in golf, and things stay a little bit weird.
