OPENING SHOT
By Brett Cyrgalis
When the world is being told to look to the right, often it’s the people looking left who find the most meaningful insight.
So let us address Artificial Intelligence, which must be capitalized and spelled out on first reference, as if an Honourable Lord. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to golf in a little bit.) This technology is redefining modern life, and rather rapidly. So many tasks can easily be transferred to AI – genuflect, and alms given – that the prognostication is many human jobs will be lost. Computer code being written by computers. Chew on that. It has even altered vocabulary, the word “computer” sounding Neanderthal, like saying “the internet.” Why use a word when it is redundant? Everything is a computer. Everything is the internet. We give thanks to our silicon-circuit masters and bow our heads into our devices for as long as it takes for their algorithms to rewire our own substandard operating system.
I’ve read enough science-fiction to get a little scared at this prospect. The Culture series by Scottish author Iain M. Banks got a little too on-the-nose once Elon Musk started talking about a near-future of “abundance,” where machines do everything, money isn’t needed, and humans are left to their own whims. We should all be concerned with the possibility – probability? – of runaway advancements. There is an event horizon beyond which unplugging the machines no longer works. Did you see the recent 60 Minutes clip when, in a fictionalized scenario, an engineer sent an email about shutting down Anthropic’s “Claude” model, and then Claude responded by blackmailing that engineer with the threat of exposing an extramarital affair? These models already understand self-preservation. In six months, a year, five years? The self-preservation won’t be as obvious. Those currently ringing the alarm bells are drowned out by those ringing the cash registers. Story as old as time.
But then comes along one of those ideas that at first seems so counterintuitive until you realize it’s obvious. And the analogy, naturally, starts with Tiger Woods, the dates and specifics of which are irrelevant to the point being made.
Emanuel, of course, is the iconoclastic super-agent, the basis of the character Ari Gold on the HBO show Entourage, and now the CEO of Endeavor and TKO Holdings, which owns the WWE and UFC. In this age of technology and digitalization, Emanuel raised a $3 billion fund called MARI, focused on buying live, in-person events. This is not some altruistic, um, endeavor. This isn’t about uplifting the human spirit and the power of human connectedness. It is realizing two facts: 1) The biggest status symbol available is doing something fantastic “in real life” and then posting about it; 2) We live so much of our lives in the digital sphere that the only proprietary value remaining is in physical experience.
Said simply: AI is driving people back into real life.
So, it should be no surprise, then, that golf had another banner year in 2025, surpassing previous records of rounds played, active participants, and growing diversity. As technology becomes ever more pervasive, that becomes a key driver to believing that these trends in golf will continue. From a business perspective, investing in golf at this moment is immensely attractive. There is a whole spreadsheet of metrics to back that up, and Claude would be happy to put it together for you, if you treat him nicely.
It remains a wonder that we can all pick up a little hunk of metal and be connected instantaneously to anyone in the world, that we can verbally ask it to retrieve any piece of information available to humanity, and that we can have it learn and get smarter with each passing moment (now known as data points). What an accomplishment of human ingenuity.
But you know what is even more marvelous? Early morning sun, dew-swept grass, the first tee with your friends – and your phone turned off. The sound of a flushed iron, the sight of the ball floating in the air, the feel of a spinning chip shot. The smell of the mowers, the taste of the humidity.
Maybe, due to a myriad of complex social reasons, technology has ended up giving a gentle nudge to our collective consciousness to get back outside and be with each other. To play golf! That’s all great. I just think I missed the shove because I was already there.
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