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Watching Golf this Week: Many Ways to Watch the U.S. Open

June 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Why is this post a little late in delivery? Because I’ve been spending the morning watching the U.S. Open live, on a window that’s open just to the left of the one I’m typing on. I could go over to the couch and watch ESPN’s live coverage, which starts at 9 a.m. Pacific time today and Friday. But I like the online focus, which today is following the Tiger-Phil-Bubba group from start to finish.

Unlike the Masters online coverage — where you had choices of different groups or different holes — the US Open online video is one group at one time. But there are so many ways to get U.S. Open coverage, from the ESPN overload on Thursday and Friday — which is sandwiched around a couple hours of NBC coverage Thursday and Friday — that you won’t go lacking.

Since this is the first U.S. Open we’ve been able to cover live, it’s been an incredible learning experience to see a course like Olympic up close and personal. Check out our previous links for info that will help you with your viewing. We’re also big fans of the U.S. Open site itself, since it has a plethora of info (live scoring, archived video interviews, and a new feature called “Playtracker” which shows a live view of the groups on the course, with stats for each player in each group. (This would be cooler if it had a live view of where the players were on each hole, like a visual Shot Tracker. Maybe next year?)

So far, we haven’t seen many glitches with the live online video — like the Masters coverage there are intermittent stops and stalls but we’ve found that when that happens, it’s easy to just close the old window and re-open a new one. Since I had to stay home this morning for work and family reasons I wasn’t able to use my press pass to watch the golf up close and personal — but I bet I have a better seat than most press folks there, because the blanket coverage of the marquee group has been phenomenal, and I can sip coffee and sit in my comfy office chair while watching. Enjoy the great weekend of San Francisco golf!

Here’s where to follow the action:

2012 U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

(all times Eastern)

OFFICIAL U.S. OPEN COVERAGE SCHEDULE

TV COVERAGE
Thursday, June 14 — ESPN, 12 p.m. — 3 p.m.; 5 p.m. — 7 p.m. NBC, 3 p.m. — 5 p.m.
Friday, June 15 — ESPN, 12 p.m. — 3 p.m.; 5 p.m. — 7 p.m. NBC, 3 p.m. — 5 p.m.
Saturday, June 16 — NBC, 1 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Sunday, June 17 — NBC, 1 p.m. — 7 p.m.

RADIO
Radio this week is via the U.S. Open app, or the U.S. Open website.
1 p.m. — 7 p.m., Thursday-Sunday

ONLINE
See above. Live online at USOpen.com, Thursday and Friday, following a “marquee group” in the morning and afternoon. Morning tee times around 7:30 a.m., afternoon tee times around 1

PGA SHOT TRACKER
No shot tracker this week — hard to believe, but true.

FACEBOOK PAGE
The USGA is doing a great job with its Facebook page. Like.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW
US Open — The official Twitter feed for the championship is active and great, with lots of links, live info. Add it to your feed now.
Geoff Shackelford — well known golf writer — go back in his timeline this week for some great videos showing the holes on the Olympic course. Maybe the top golf Twitterer out there, especially when it comes to analysis/insight.
Golf Channel — official Golf Channel feed
@PGATOUR — official PGA Twitter feed
@StephanieWei — great golf writer who is a Twitter fiend. Works hard and long every day, and also has great insider views, via Instagrams.

WHAT’S THE COURSE LIKE?
If you haven’t had your fill of Olympic info, you’ve been on another planet. So far the overall view we like best was the Sunday special in the San Francisco Chronicle, where beat writer Ron Kroichick interviewed Ken Venturi for a hole-by-hole breakdown of the course. The official Open website also has an extensive hole by hole page with flyby views, etc. etc.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST YEAR?
Rory McIlroy, the boy wonder.

LOCAL FLAVOR
The columnists and writers at the San Franciso Chronicle do golf right.

FEDEX CUP LEADERS
1. Jason Dufner, 1,735 points
2. Hunter Mahan, 1,477 points
3. Tiger Woods, 1,404
4. Zach Johnson, 1,386
5. Bubba Watson, 1,372

See the full standings for the FedEx Cup points list.

WORLD GOLF RANKINGS
1. Luke Donald; 2. Rory McIlroy; 3. Lee Westwood; 4. Tiger Woods; 5. Bubba Watson.
See the official World Golf Ranking list.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, ESPN, ESPN Radio, Golf, Golf Channel, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBC Sports, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods, US Open Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

PGA: All Tour TV Coverage Will be Simulcast Online and Via Mobile Apps in 2013

June 14, 2012 by 7 Comments

All the live coverage of PGA Tour events next season will be shown simultaneously on the tour’s digital platforms, including via its mobile apps and at the PGATour.com website, a tour executive said Wednesday.

In a phone interview with Luis Goicouria, the vice president of operations and business development for PGA Tour Digital, Goicouria said that for the 2013 season, all live tour TV coverage will be simulcast online, giving mobile and web-connected fans the same experience as those sitting in front of a TV. The expansion of live video content, Goicoura said, is a direct response to fans’ desire for more mobile content, especially live video of tournament play.

“Our [online + mobile] video content consumption is going through the roof,” said Goicouria, who said that tour-hosted video starts are up 81 percent so far this year over last, and YouTube views of archived videos has increased 94 percent in the same time frame. Currently, the Tour offers its “Live@” program for 10 selected tournaments during the season, typically the bigger ones like the recent Memorial tourney. The Live@ production is separate from and typically less comprehensive than any network coverage, though of similar production quality. According to Goicouria, the Live@ broadcasts typically attract between a half-million and a million video streams per event.

The Live@ coverage typically focuses on one or two “scoring” holes or signature holes, like the island green at the Players Championship. Though it doesn’t offer the breadth of coverage a typical network broadcast from partners Golf Channel, CBS, NBC or ESPN does, the Live@ shows aren’t chopped liver either.

“It’s not like we just slap a couple webcams on a green,” Goicouria said. “It’s a full-blown studio production.”

But Goicouria said the costs associated with such production keep the tour from rolling out Live@ at every stop. Unfortunately that leaves online-only or mobile-centric fans behind their counterparts on the couch when it comes to live video. Next season that ends, with the digital platforms (the website, as well as the iOS and Android apps) offering simulcasts of the live TV coverage, as well as Live@’s additional focus at the selected events.

Goicouria also said that the tour is working to make its addictive Shot Tracker feature (screen grab below) available for mobile devices, but didn’t yet promise a delivery date. Shot Tracker, which gives real-time updates on a tournament field by showing how far a player has hit a shot and how far he has left to the hole, can be mesmerizing, with players’ statuses constantly updating. The main reason it hasn’t been available for mobile platforms, Goicouria said, was due to the fact that the application was built with Adobe Flash, which isn’t supported on Apple devices like the iPhone or iPad.

“If there was one thing I wish we had for mobile that we don’t, it’s Shot Tracker,” said Goicouria, who pledged a “complete revamp” of the feature for next season.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Golf, Golf Channel, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, PGA, Smartphone, Tablets, The Masters, Tiger Woods, YouTube Tagged With: , , , ,

Tiger Doesn’t Like Fans With Cell Phones, Either

June 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Tiger Woods offered an unsolicited opinion on fans with cellular phones, telling ESPN reporter Tom Rinaldi that if the Tiger-Phil-Bubba pairing was done in a regular tour event — where fans are allowed to have cell phones this year — “it would have been brutal.”

Rinaldi, who we think interviewed Tiger after his mass press conference Tuesday (we saw Rinaldi waiting for Tiger outside the press tent, and Tiger is in the blue sweater/blue shirt he wore to that press conferece), asks Tiger about the marquee pairing of himself, Bubba Watson and Phil Mickelson, a trio certain to attract the balance of the gallery at the Olympic Club during Thursday and Friday rounds.

If you watch the video (which is under the USGA auspice, and not ESPN even though ESPN’s Rinaldi is doing the interview) Tiger says the pairing should be “fun, a lot of fun,” and then adds the caveat which is a non-subtle dig at the PGA’s cell-phone friendly policy.

“It’s something I don’t think we all would enjoy that much in a regular tour event, with the new camera policy,” Woods said. “It would have been brutal. But here they’re not allowed in, so this will be a fun pairing.”

After overzealous cell-phone fans bothered Mickelson at the recent Memorial tour stop, the issue has come to the forefront — with even the USGA saying they are looking at allowing cell phones on course during tournament days, though not this week. Perhaps the PGA and the USGA need to look overseas to the British Open, where there is a clear, smart and civil list of guidelines that should probably eliminate 99 percent of problems.

For us colonists, it might help to have really big signs near tee boxes and greens, saying “turn your damn phone off” or something to help people remember. And in the meantime, the pros who are playing a game for millions of dollars of other peoples’ money should remember that it is the fans, and the sponsors who want to reach golf fans, who line their pockets — so maybe the golfers, who text like madmen on the course when they are practicing, can cut normal folks some slack.

Filed Under: ESPN, Golf, iPhone, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods, US Open Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Not-so-Mobile Sports Report: U.S. Open Notebook, and The Beast that is No. 16

June 13, 2012 by 1 Comment

A quick disclaimer: Even though we are Mobile Sports Report, where we are “aggressively covering the growing intersection of sports, mobile technology and social media,” at our hearts we are sports fans first and when given entree to an event like the U.S. Open, well we just can’t help ourselves. So here is a not-so-necessarily Mobile Sports Report notebook on fun and interesting stuff we saw and heard at The Olympic Club so far this week:

The Beast that is No. 16

If you are tired of the pros regularly turning par 5 holes into a driver-wedge-eagle, you are going to love No. 16 at the Olympic Club. From some new back tees the hole will play 670 yards long, the longest ever U.S. Open hole. Our quick video taken today from the approximate middle of the hole looks way back toward the tee, then swings toward the green, not really doing the left-curve banana justice.

Do the players like it? Doubtful. With only two par 5 holes on the pros’ scorecard, No. 16 is the first and it will mess with the head of the average tour pro, who when he sees a “5 par” starts thinking birdie. There were all sorts of dire predictions about 16 today, with some players guessing it could serve up the highest scores all weekend. Masters champ Bubba Watson at his press conference said that during his practice round Tuesday he teed off from the back tees and hit driver-driver, “hit two perfect shots,” and still ended up 60 yards short of the green.

The last word went to Phil Mickelson, who was asked after his formal press conference if he thought 16 was unfair.

“Unfair? I’d never say it’s unfair,” said Mickelson. “It’s just not a good hole.”

But No. 17 May Be Worse

After the brutally long No. 16 the Open field will be confronted with No. 17, a seemingly “easy” par 5 at only 522 yards. Though the distance shouldn’t keep some from hitting the green in 2, what will really vex the players is the hole’s slope — it is banked as steeply as the curves at Daytona, dropping some 20 to 30 feet from side to side. The picture here doesn’t do it justice, looking up from the right side of the fairway. It’s safe to guess that a lot of drives that land in the fairway will end up sliding down into the rough, where it will be almost impossible to reach the green in two.

The 17th fairway at Olympic Club, looking up from the right hand side. Credit: Paul Kapustka, MSR.

And getting to the green isn’t necessarily the final chapter here. The green slopes left to right too, and the chipping area behind the right edge of the green is shaven smooth, meaning that mis-hits to the right side — or even too-strong putts from the left — may end up 30 to 40 yards down the hill in a small group of trees, where you can’t air a chip back up because of the branches and you can’t bump one up because the ball just keeps rolling back down. When you are watching on TV or online, watch for train wrecks at 17.

BONUS UPDATE: Check out the videos of balls rolling off the green, courtesy of Stephanie Wei.

Text, text, text

One surprising fact learned during watching some practice rounds today: Pro golfers are texting fiends, often typing away on their mobile devices up until they hit a shot, and then again right after. After admiring the low, bullet trajectory of Charl Schwartzel’s second shot on No. 16 we looked back and before the ball had even landed Schwartzel had his device out and was typing away as he walked up the fairway. We saw other golfers texting on the tee box, right up until their playing partner was in his backswing. Who says it’s the fans who are the only over-cellular culprits?

Only in San Francisco…

Would you see a Deadhead tie-dyed t-shirt with the U.S. Open logo. Wonder if it comes with a free medicinal license? So far in our limited wanderings around Olympic we haven’t caught a whiff of San Francisco’s favorite treat, and we ain’t talking about Rice-a-Roni. But you can bet more than a few of these will sell this weekend.

Filed Under: About MSR, Daytona 500, Golf, iPhone, PGA, Tiger Woods, US Open Tagged With: , , , ,

Tiger Woods Returns to the Olympic Club 14 Years Later, Discovers the Old Course is a New Course

June 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Tiger Woods is among 20 players competing in the U.S. Open at the Olympic Club this week who also played in the event the last time the tournament visited the historic course just south of San Francisco in 1998.

Woods, of course, has competed on courses around the world since. But the buzz as the opening round of the United States’ 112th National Championship approaches is that few courses are as stringently set up as the 7,170-yard, par-70 Olympic Club’s Lake Course.

And as the enticing threesome of Woods, Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson prepare for the tournament’s opening round Thursday, which you can watch online in HD coverage on www.usopen.com and via the U.S. Open mobile app, a lot has changed in 14 years.

“All of the greens have obviously been redone since we were here in ’98,” Woods said Tuesday during a steady stream of pre-tournament press conferences. “The new chipping areas are certainly different. (I’ve) got to get used to some of those different shots.”

Woods, the three-time U.S. Open winner who claimed his 73rd PGA Tour career victory less than two weeks ago at the Memorial, finished tied for 18th at the ’98 U.S. Open.

“Well, first all my charts are all outdated because they’ve resurfaced every green,” he said. “So I had to do a whole new book. But also I think that the new chipping areas, as I was saying earlier, are way different. We had balls that were landing on the green on 13 that were going in the hazard.  That’s a big change.”

But like every golfer in the field has expressed, the Lake Course layout has been designed, with the intent, according to the USGA, ” . . . To make the U.S. Open the most rigorous, yet fair, examination of golf skills, testing all forms of shotmaking.”

The USGA’s course layout criteria includes 14 points, and is so detailed, golf’s governing body calls it a “philosophy.”

“This is a long grind,” said Woods, whose last U.S. Open victory occurred at Torrey Pines near San Diego, Calif., in 2008. “We’re teeing off of No. 9, so we don’t get to play obviously the first six holes until it’s basically our back nine.

“It’s such a test playing in this championship. I think this is one of those championships that I think the guys talk the least to one another because it’s so difficult. Every shot is — there’s no shot you can take off, so to speak. Sometimes, say you’re playing St. Andrews, and you go ahead and wail away . . . no big deal. But here there’s such a premium on positioning the golf ball.”

Woods also cited the layout’s oddities. Holes No. 1 and 17, while playing to the same distance, are respectively a par 4 and par 5. And then there’s the 670-yard 16th — the longest hole ever in the U.S. Open history.

And as other golfers and media broadcast analysts have suggested, holes No. 1 through 6, which Woods, Mickelson and Watson will play to finish their opening round, are likely the keys to a successful or non-successful round.

“I think that the first six, if you play them for four straight days even par, you’re going to be picking up just a boat load of shots,” said Woods, summarizing the consensus of the course overall, “They’re just difficult.”

Filed Under: Golf, PGA, Tiger Woods

Early Thursday U.S. Open Coverage of Tiger-Phil-Bubba Group Only Available Online

June 12, 2012 by 5 Comments

Getting psyched to watch the incredible first-round pairing of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson Thursday at the U.S. Open? If so you better have an Internet connection or a smartphone with a good cell signal, because the first 90 minutes of that group’s play will only be available online or through the USGA’s mobile app.

Though there’s going to be a ton of regular TV coverage of the Open this week, first from ESPN on Thursday and Friday and then NBC on the weekend, it’s kind of cool that the somewhat staid USGA (an organization that bans cell phones on the course during tournament play) is highlighting its digital chops in this manner.

Starting a 7:33 a.m. Pacific time from the No. 9 tee at the Olympic Club, you can watch Tiger, Phil and Bubba only at usopen.com or via the U.S. Open Golf Championship app, which is available for iPhones and iPads and Android devices. The live online TV at the Open is powered technically by IBM, the same folks who are the technical brains behind the Masters’ excellent online coverage.

“Mobile is an increasingly strategic part of our marketing strategy,” said Joe Goode, managing director of communications for the USGA. “It’s an interesting group and for the first round USOpen.com and the apps will be the only way to watch the first 90 minutes.”

The online coverage of the marquee group will continue throughout their round, so you can keep watching online if you can’t get to a TV screen when ESPN comes on live at 9 a.m.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, AT&T, ESPN, Golf, iOS, iPad, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods Tagged With: , , , ,
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