The Tech Behind the U.S. Open
Ever wondered what it takes to transform an open, historic golf course like Shinnecock Hills into a fully functional, hyper-connected smart city for just one week? Join us for an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the massive technology operation that powers a modern major golf championship.
Expect an interactive, highly visual, and candid conversation about what it actually takes to deploy enterprise-grade infrastructure in the middle of a golf course - and the chaotic moments that happen when nature, live broadcast demands, and hundreds of thousands of fans collide. Our journey begins under the grass with the physical tech backbone. Before a single swing is taken, a city must be engineered from scratch. We will walk you through the monumental task of laying miles of temporary fiber optic cable and setting up modular, on-course data centers capable of surviving the elements. You’ll get an unfiltered look at the logistics of handling intense data demands, keeping thousands of fans connected, and ensuring the entire infrastructure holds up against unpredictable field challenges like coastal winds and heavy construction machinery. Once the infrastructure is live, a massive, interconnected ecosystem runs on top of it. This operation goes way beyond standard mobile apps. We'll explore the mission-critical tech driving real-time digital leaderboards, admissions and ticketing gates, robust on-course cellular networks, and advanced telemetry dashboards used by event operations. You’ll learn how cloud-native applications and network monitoring keep these high-stakes systems running flawlessly under immense pressure.
Finally, we’ll dive deep into today’s hottest tech topic: Artificial Intelligence. We will be sharing a very real, highly authentic case study: the USGA’s journey in building its new "Rules AI" engine within the GHIN mobile app. Developed to give golfers, authoritative rulings on the course, this tool was built on a "confidence-first" architecture trained on a database of over 25,000 historical expert queries. We’ll share the raw engineering hurdles from this 18-month journey, explain how we prevented the "hallucinations" common in generic AI, and discuss the valuable product lessons learned after putting the tool into the hands of real golfers during our recent pilot launch.
Anthony Santora M.S. ’05 serves as the Managing Director of Information Technology at the United States Golf Association (USGA), where he leads the organization’s enterprise-wide technology strategy and drives innovation, security, and operational excellence. His expertise is instrumental in powering championship operations - including the U.S. Open, which accommodates more than 200,000 onsite fans and millions of digital viewers - and in modernizing core systems to enhance both the game and the fan experience.
Tuesday, September 29
6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
UCC Gallery
For event related questions, contact [email protected]
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