AI Broadcaster Duff Foreman Debuts to Backlash in New Mexico

An AI broadcaster named Duff Foreman made its debut in the commentary booth at the New Mexico Open, Sept. 14-16 at Turtleback Mountain Golf & Resort in Elephant Butte, and the reaction across golf's social media was swift and unflinching criticism.

Who built Duff Foreman?

Duff is an AI agent developed by Gopher Hole Productions, a digital media company based in Westport, Mass. The tournament, run by the Sun Country Section of the PGA of America, featured former PGA Tour winners Notah Begay III, Matt Every and Sean O'Hair in the field, with Begay splitting time between playing and joining Golf Channel's Ryan Burr and Duff in the booth.

Paul Sidlo, Gopher Hole's chief executive and one of Duff's lead architects, previously worked as creative director for five Olympic Games and 14 Super Bowls before turning to AI broadcasting. He said the bot is intended to work alongside human broadcasters rather than replace them, pulling real-time data that a human analyst could not match. Reaction to Duff's voice and delivery split viewers, with some finding its Scottish-inflected, human-like cadence oddly endearing and others calling it an off-putting distraction.

What did Duff Foreman get right?

During the opening round, Duff calculated that two-time Utah Open winner Blake Tomlinson had an 11 percent chance of winning the week, and noted that the high-desert elevation would let drives carry roughly 9 percent farther than at sea level. Sidlo said the system draws on databases including BlueGolf, PGA of America and USGA records, and live weather feeds to generate its analysis in real time.

Where did it stumble?

Duff's broadcast came with three-second response delays and, on multiple occasions, talked over its booth partners. When Burr asked how the course defends itself in calm wind, Duff cited firm greens without accounting for overnight rain, a gap Begay corrected on air. The bot also could not answer a basic query about long-driver Maurice Allen's average driving distance, and missed a live cue during a par-3 approach shot in the second round, leading to several seconds of dead air before producers cut to a scenic shot.

Media critic Matt Yoder wrote on Awful Announcing that Duff's limited appearances made the broadcast feel like an early, unpolished version of the technology. Golf fans and media members were similarly unsparing on social media, with much of the criticism centered on Duff's stiff, scripted-sounding delivery and the awkward pauses whenever it was cued to speak.

How does Duff actually work?

Sidlo said the system is not generating information from nothing; it pulls from a mix of existing sources, including BlueGolf, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, along with PGA of America and USGA records, and processes them in real time to fit the moment being discussed on air. It is built to analyze numbers and course strategy on the fly rather than read from a script.

One structural limit is that Duff is programmed to speak only when directly prompted by its human broadcast partners, which complicates the kind of spontaneous back-and-forth that makes a booth feel natural. Making an AI's contributions feel authentic and additive, rather than pre-scripted, remains one of the bigger hurdles facing AI sports broadcasting.

Duff Foreman's debut showed an AI can compute what a human analyst can't, but not yet deliver it at broadcast speed.

What's next for Duff Foreman?

Sidlo said Duff will keep training on golf data and swing analysis, and that Gopher Hole envisions extending the technology beyond the broadcast booth. An investor in the company, Patrick Pharris, said the AI could eventually serve as a virtual caddie or swing instructor for everyday golfers, or be built into golf simulators.

"We believe that this is just the beginning," Sidlo said.