At this year’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Sahalee Country Club, seasoned competitor Amy Yang clinched her first championship title, an achievement for which she has worked her whole life .
That wasn’t the only first at the event.
By introducing real-time, shot-level data, AI-powered predictive analytics, and T-Mobile 5G solutions, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship became the LPGA Tour’s most statistically advanced and 5G-connected tournament in history.
These advancements do more than enhance the game of golf for players and fans — they are steps toward greater gender equity in sports.
Real-time insights change the game
The KPMG Women’s PGA Championship’s 10-year history is paved with technological advancements. This includes KPMG Performance Insights, which were introduced in 2021 to provide players, coaches, caddies, media, and fans with access to player performance statistics. Each year, KPMG improves the system, rolling out new capabilities, like a personalized digital portal for each athlete that was introduced in 2022, and a website launched in 2023 to give the public access to the data, too.
This year, the game-changer was adding real-time capabilities made available through the incorporation of ShotLink Pro 2.0 technology and KPMG CHAMPCAST presented by T-Mobile technology.
“KPMG Performance Insights was a great tool we put in place three years ago, but it needed to be turbocharged with better technology because it wasn’t real time, and it also didn’t have the same technology embedded in it that the men on the PGA TOUR have,” says KPMG Chair and CEO Paul Knopp.
By partnering with T-Mobile to provide 5G connectivity and with the PGA of America and PGA TOUR to implement ShotLink Pro 2.0 — the shot-tracking system with to-the-centimeter accuracy already making golf better for male athletes — KPMG made real-time advanced statistics a reality in women’s golf. Players gained immediate access to their data for the first time ever, enabling them to analyze what is working and what is not. Knopp describes it as night-and-day improvement, noting that KPMG’s performance data system previously required manual input from caddies.
At the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, however, as soon as LPGA athletes were finished playing their round, they were able to immediately view their KPMG Performance Insights player dashboard to see advanced statistics and analytics from the round and compare it their season performance. These insights helped pinpoint areas to work on ahead of the next round, such as driving accuracy or their short game. For a player, that can be the difference between missing the cut and competing for the Championship.
“This is real-time data for the first time ever [on the LPGA Tour], and we’re really proud to bring it to the women’s game of golf,” Knopp says.
Technology elevates the experience for fans
Technology improves the fan experience, too. ShotLink Pro 2.0 technology was integrated into KPMG CHAMPCAST presented by T-Mobile, made possible by T-Mobile’s advanced 5G network. Fans could view the KPMG CHAMPCAST presented by T-Mobile via the PGA Championship’s new app and featured 3D imagery, shot trails, and green views, among other features. So, fans on the 14th green could still watch, for example, Nelly Korda’s shot on the 10th tee box live.
“This is real-time video that you are watching,” notes T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert. “This course is filled with some of the biggest and most beautiful trees you’ve ever seen, and that makes it really complex to be able to provide great wireless service. We see it as an opportunity to showcase what we can do with the most advanced aspects of our network technology.”
Fans also enjoyed AI-powered insights through live television coverage on Golf Channel and NBC Sports, as well as the stream on Peacock. Broadcast personnel used the AI predictive technology embedded in KPMG Performance Insights to make predictions about player performance, enhancing program commentary.
Advancing women on and off the course
Knopp says technology advancements matter because beyond improving the game. They can also drive equity between the LPGA tour and the PGA TOUR. Each year, in conjunction with the Championship, KPMG runs the KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit, an initiative focused on moving more women into the C-suite. Sievert describes it as one of the most important events of its kind. T-Mobile has sent executives to attend since the Summit’s inception in 2015.
“Some of those executives subsequently became my direct reports, taking on the biggest jobs in our company, like the president of our business group, our overall head of communications and community engagement, and our chief people officer,” Sievert says.
“We’re really trying to elevate women in business,” Knopp says, “and we certainly want to elevate the women’s game of golf to the point where, hopefully, we drive toward greater equity.”
The PGA of America and KPMG plan to test additional ways to use T-Mobile 5G solutions to improve women’s golf. For more information, visit the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship page.