The R&A’s Director of Technology, Karen Lyttle, on why golf’s digital future depends less on the tools it buys and more on the way it chooses to lead
Feature | GBTC 2026 Day 1 Keynote | The Merchant Hotel, Belfast
Think about what it takes to stage The Open. Live scoring for a global audience, ball-tracking data, ticketing for hundreds of thousands of spectators, broadcast feeds and on-site connectivity across a links course exposed to whatever the weather brings. Then add the year-round work: the Rules of Golf, the World Handicap System serving millions of golfers, championships across men’s, women’s and junior golf, and the digital platforms that connect The R&A with affiliates around the world.
Behind all of it sits a technology function, and at its head is Karen Lyttle.
When The R&A’s Director of Technology stepped onto the GBTC 2026 stage to open Day 1, delegates might reasonably have expected a tour of systems and platforms. Instead, her keynote turned the spotlight on leadership, and on the idea that the way golf leads its technology matters as much as the technology itself.
Technology doesn’t fail. Leadership does.
The title, Leading Differently by Design, captured the central theme. Strong leadership, diverse teams and healthy technology cultures rarely happen by accident. They are the product of deliberate choices.
It’s a point that resonates across the industry. Clubs, operators and suppliers have spent the past decade adopting booking platforms, launch monitors, CRMs, data tools and, increasingly, AI. Yet the difference between a system that transforms a business and one that gathers dust is rarely the software. It’s whether the people leading the change have built the team, the culture and the clarity of purpose to make it work.
Leading technology inside a governing body
Few organisations in golf carry the weight of history that The R&A does, and few face such a broad technology brief. Supporting championships watched around the world, governing a sport played in well over a hundred countries and engaging with a new generation of golfers all depend on technology that works quietly and reliably in the background.
Leading that function means balancing tradition with modernisation, a tension every golf club in the room will recognise. Heritage is one of golf’s greatest assets, but it can also become a reason to keep doing things the way they have always been done. Leading differently means being intentional about which traditions to protect and which habits to change.
Building teams that think differently
A recurring thread was the makeup of the teams doing the work. Technology remains one of the least diverse areas of business, and golf has its own long-standing challenges with representation. Put the two together and the risk of narrow thinking is obvious.
The business case for doing better is straightforward. Teams that reflect the golfers they serve build better products, spot problems sooner and make fewer blind-spot decisions. For a sport working hard to attract new, younger and more diverse audiences, that isn’t a side issue. It’s central to growth.
Designing for that kind of team doesn’t happen through good intentions alone. It shows up in how roles are defined, where people are recruited from, how talent is developed and whose voices are heard when decisions are made.
What golf businesses can take away
For the operators, owners and suppliers in the room, the message was clear. The tools are now widely available, and in many cases they are good. What separates organisations is how intentionally they are led.
That means starting with the problem rather than the product. It means investing in people as seriously as platforms. And it means treating culture, inclusion and leadership style as things to be designed with the same care as any technology rollout, not left to chance.
Setting the tone
Karen Lyttle’s keynote set the agenda for a Day 1 programme that went on to examine women in golf leadership, sustainability and the rise of AI. Each session returned, in its own way, to the question she put at the heart of the conference: not simply what technology golf should adopt, but how its leaders should choose to lead the change.
The conversation continues at GBTC27, 4–6 May 2027, at the Titanic Hotel Belfast. Register Here GOLF BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 2027