After a rough third round at LIV Golf Korea, Bryson DeChambeau used AI to improve his swing. He walked through concepts like alpha torque and gamma torque, asking what mechanical forces could stop a golf club from turning over through impact. As he shared the details after the final round, the golf world took notice, and now DeChambeau is facing criticism.

“How would you describe Bryson in a broad way right now?” Andy Johnson, the host of the Shotgun Podcast, who is also the founder of Fried Egg Golf (a platform that makes golf architecture approachable), asked. “What would be the number that you’d put him at right now? I think it’s 10 to 15. But anyway, these top 10 to 15 players in the world had to be reminded about grip pressure. Yeah, by an AI. By AI.

“That’s something your mom tells you before you go play a junior golf tournament. So don’t grip the club too hard,” Johnson said.

Here’s the thing: DeChambeau explained that the beginning of his first round at LIV Golf Korea felt good, as his swings were in sync, but the round slowly fell apart. In fact, he was seen practicing at the range on Saturday night, trying to fix his swing. But after multiple attempts, he threw his club in frustration, and that’s when he turned to AI for the solution. After a detailed conversation about the physics of the golf swing, the AI gave him a simple solution: loosen your grip on the club. And that’s what DeChambeau admitted helped him afterwards.

“My hands just felt like they were moving forward with this,” the golfer mentioned. “I could not get the club to turn over. Even if I tried to stop it there, it wouldn’t turn over. I came here today with just a little bit freer hands, and I felt the club a lot better, and I felt like I could close the club a lot more effectively than I started stripping it.”

AI, more specifically Gemini, helped the golfer identify that grip pressure and tension were hindering his performance.

However, DeChambeau using AI for help was barely surprising. Earlier this year, his group formally acquired Sportsbook and AI and announced SAMI as the new agentic model built to coach players and deliver feedback in real time. The model is actually built on Gemini’s multimodal reasoning to analyze and give predictive responses as it measures swing speed. But the golfer is also getting heat for using AI as a professional.

Regardless, DeChambeau shot a final round of 65 in Korea, and though he missed the playoff by a single shot, his performance helped Crushers GC win the team title. It was the team’s record-10th LIV Golf title. So, the advice from a general chatbot worked for DeChambeau.

Interestingly, he is not the only player to leverage AI for his benefit.

Other golfers are investing in AI

Justin Rose has been doing something similar. Rose has invested in Mustard Golf, an AI-powered swing analysis app developed in collaboration with Golf Digest’s top-ranked US coach Mark Blackburn and performance coach Jason Goldsmith. Similar to SAMI, the app uses computer vision to analyze biomechanics, and Rose’s involvement goes beyond just putting his name on it.

He has been working on the development of the application. He has worked to improve the product, help identify which swings’ positions matter, and improve the diagnostic framework when it was being developed. And his form over the past 12 months has also been improving for the same reason.

But coming back to golf analyst Andy Johnson, he also highlighted this point. He said that even though everybody is having a hard time believing golf coaching will be super effective with someone helping hands-on, there will be some people who will have great success learning from AI.

With young people and young players coming in, AI in real time could be as helpful and easily accessible to them as a YouTube tutorial. So, the time and the model world are changing, and Bryson DeChambeau has just been a pioneer in that department.