The Anti-AI-Slop Playbook

The problem with AI copy isn't that a machine wrote it. Plenty of humans write the exact same stuff. The problem is that it's generic. It describes every golf club, which means it describes none of them.

Run this test on any sentence you've written. Imagine it pasted, word for word, onto a rival club's website. Does it still work there? Then it's slop. Delete it.

"Nestled in the heart of the Sussex countryside, the estate boasts two beautiful golf courses that offer breathtaking views of the rolling hills and tree-lined fairways."

That's real copy from Mannings Heath. Now look at this:

"Nestled in the rolling hills of Tennessee, this club boasts world-class amenities and offers something for both seasoned golfers and those just starting out."

That's Old Natchez Country Club, four thousand miles away. Swap the county names and you couldn't tell them apart. Both are interchangeable, and interchangeable is the disease. Every tell below is just a symptom of it.

The fix is almost never "swap the bad word for a synonym." It's "replace the evocative adjective with a concrete fact only your club could claim." A year. A yardage. A price. A name. A time on the clock.

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The thirteen tells, and how to kill each one

1. Em-dash overuse

The dash isn't banned. Dickinson lived on it, Nietzsche hammered it, and Bryan Garner reckons it's the most underused mark in English. The tell isn't the dash itself. It's the rhythm. AI fires three a paragraph, always for the same parenthetical-aside cadence.

One earned dash per page reads human. A dash in every other sentence reads like a model that learned one trick. Vary it: commas, colons, full stops, the occasional dash for genuine emphasis. If you've got more than one or two on a page, convert most and keep the single best one.

2. "Nestled" / "nestled in the heart of"

The number-one giveaway. It opens a location description while telling you nothing about the location.

• Before: "Nestled in the heart of the Hertfordshire countryside."
• After: "Six miles south of Watford, the course runs along the Chess valley."

No "nestled." A real distance. A named feature. Now it could only be your club.

3. "Boasts" as the main verb

The Kobak study found AI suppresses the plain verb "is" by around 10%, reaching instead for inflated verbs: "boasts," "stands as," "serves as." They're significance-inflation, noise pretending to be substance.

• Before: "The club boasts world-class facilities."
• After: "The club has 27 holes."

Plain "has." Plain "is." Then a specific. Every time.

4. "World-class" / "championship course"

These are quality claims with the evidence removed. Don't assert the quality. Cite the thing that proves it and let the reader conclude it for themselves.

• Before: "Our world-class championship course."
• After: "It hosted Final Open Qualifying in 2019. Par 72, 6,840 yards off the whites."

5. "Elevate, unlock, discover, immerse, curated, bespoke"

Aspirational verbs and adjectives floating free of any object. They sound like an airline lounge brochure. Name the actual thing.

• Before: "Elevate your game with a curated golfing experience."

• After: "The new short-game area has three target greens and a bunker built to USGA spec."

• Before: "Immerse yourself in a bespoke dining experience."

• After: "Four courses in the Colt Room, £45 a head."

6. "Vibrant, seamless, rich tapestry, testament to"

Pure puffery. Delete and replace with the calendar, the price, the fact.

• Before: "A vibrant social calendar and a rich tapestry of events."
• After: "There's a mixed open every third Saturday and a quiz night the first Friday of the month."

Show the calendar. Don't call it vibrant.

7. "Whether you're a seasoned golfer or a complete beginner"

The textbook hedge. It's the writer refusing to picture a single real person, so they gesture at everyone at once and land on no one.

"Whether you're a seasoned professional or a passionate beginner, Centurion Golf Club promises to captivate and inspire."

That's real Centurion copy. "Captivate and inspire": two empty verbs bolted to a hedge. Cut the whole construction, or replace it with two actual people in two real scenarios:

"Off the back tees it's a serious test. Off the yellows it's a gentle walk and a good first eighteen."

8. "It's not just X, it's Y" / "more than just a round of golf"

The seesaw. PR Daily and Alex Banks both say the same thing: once per entire piece, maximum, and only when the contrast is genuinely surprising. Usually you just delete it and state the Y directly.

• Before: "It's more than just a round of golf, it's an experience."
• After: "You finish on a 200-yard par 3 back to a green below the clubhouse terrace, with everyone on it watching."

9. Tricolons / the rule of three

AI loves three of everything. Three adjectives, three parallel clauses, "for golfers of all skill levels, all ages, all abilities." It's a documented structural fingerprint, flagged by both Wikipedia's AI-writing guide and The Signal. A tricolon isn't a crime when it's earned and each item pulls its weight. The tell is the reflexive one, where the third item is padding the writer reached for to fill out the pattern.

• Before: "A seamless blend of challenge, tranquillity and tradition."
• After: "It's a proper test off the whites. Off the yellows it's an honest day out."

Two, not three. Run a number-of-three audit on your draft and break at least half of them, into twos, fours, or one strong noun.

10. Balanced, symmetrical sentences

When every sentence is roughly the same length and weight, the page hums in a flat, even register that's unmistakably machine. Real writing is lumpy. PR Daily's fix is literally "keep some short, sure; let others sprawl."

Follow a thirty-word sentence with a four-word one:

"The 17th is 184 yards, all carry over the old reservoir, and into the prevailing wind it can need a 4-iron. Bring spare balls."

That last sentence is the human signature. AI never writes "Bring spare balls."

11. Vague evocative filler with zero specifics

"A proper day out in the countryside." "An unforgettable experience." These feel like writing while containing no information. Apply the one-verifiable-fact rule: every paragraph needs a year, a yardage, a price, a name or a time.

• Before: "A proper day out in the Hertfordshire countryside, immerse yourself in a curated golfing experience that's more than just a round of golf." (Count them: proper-as-filler, immerse, curated, experience, the "more than just" trope. Five tells, zero facts.)
• After: "Harry Colt laid out the back nine in 1923 and barely a bunker has moved since. The 12th still does exactly what he wanted it to."

12. The relentlessly warm, agreeable corporate tone

AI is trained to be likeable and risk-averse, so it flatters and never commits. A point of view is unfakeable, because it requires knowing the place. Drop one mild insider opinion per page: the hardest hole, why the back nine beats the front, the greens that catch newcomers out.

"The 12th is the best short par 4 in the county, and we'll happily argue about it at the bar."

A model writing blind can't produce that line, because it doesn't know which hole, or that anyone would defend it.

13. "Proper" as an empty intensifier

"A proper challenge." "A proper day out." Filler with nothing behind it. Only use "proper" when the next clause cashes it, when it points at something a member would actually recognise:

"A proper test off the back tees, where the rough actually punishes you."

There, "proper" earns its place because the next clause backs it up. Otherwise, replace it with the concrete reason it's proper.

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The toolkit: six moves that de-slop anything

1. The paste test. Imagine the sentence on a competitor's site. If it survives unchanged, rewrite it until it only fits your club.
2. One verifiable fact per paragraph. A year, a yardage, a price, a name, a designer, a distance, a time. No exceptions.
3. Swap adjectives for nouns. "Stunning views" becomes "You can see Canary Wharf from the 9th tee on a clear day." The noun does the persuading the adjective only claimed.
4. Read it aloud in the captain's voice. Would he say it at the bar? "Immerse yourself in a curated golfing experience" fails instantly. "It's a proper test off the back tees but you can have fun off the yellows" passes.
5. Replace inflated verbs with "is" plus a fact. "Stands as," "serves as," "boasts," "is a testament to" all become a plain copula and a checkable detail.
6. Commit instead of hedging. "Arguably one of the finest" becomes "the best par 3 on the course." If it's true, say it plainly. If you can't defend it, cut it. Don't soften it with "perhaps."

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The banned-word checklist

Run find-and-flag before you publish. Each instance must be justified or replaced with a specific:

nestled · nestled in the heart of · boasts · world-class · championship (as a quality claim) · elevate · unlock · discover · immerse · curated · bespoke · vibrant · seamless · rich tapestry · testament to · proper (as filler) · stands as · serves as · arguably · something for everyone · whether you're a seasoned... or... · more than just

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Slop vs human, side by side

Notice what the right-hand column has that the left never could: a date, a name, a price, a sightline, a joke only a player would make. None of it survives the paste test. All of it could only be true of one club.

So stop describing golf. Describe your golf course: the par 3 over the reservoir, the steak pie that sells out on a Sunday, the 7:42 frost delay on the first tee in January. Specifics are the one thing a generic machine can't fake, because it has never stood on your first tee. You have.