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World Golf Match Play, Live Online

February 22, 2012 by 1 Comment

It’s somewhat under the radar — did you hear any promos on TV? — but the PGA does have a pretty good online option for a short list of tournaments, including the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championships currently underway. The Live@ tour coverage is available for mobile platforms as well as online.

Tourneys like the match play are perfect for online watching — this thing stretches with multiple head-to-head competitions all day today and tomorrow, during times when a lot of golf fans in the U.S. are at work. We just fired up the online window and appreciate the major-league production values.

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PGA’s ShotTracker: A Pretty Good Live TV Substitute

February 19, 2012 by 6 Comments

Once again, golf fans are faced with a half-hour gap in live TV coverage Sunday, this time from the Northern Trust Open at Riviera in Los Angeles. We tweeted the Northern Trust’s Twitter feed and got back the suggestion to check out the PGA Tour’s ShotTracker page, which we did. It’s pretty cool. It’s not live TV, but you can “follow” the action shot by shot.

@ We’ll be doing our best. But to get the most complete coverage #NTOpen2012 visit @ ShotTracker: http://t.co/Yp3hhBR1

February 19, 2012 11:25 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@NTrustOpen

Northern Trust Open

If you look at the screen grab it takes a few seconds to figure out — but then you realize how the thing works. It basically follows each player shot by shot on any given hole and reports the length of each shot. It also has color-codes to show where shots landed, rough, fairway, etc. It updates pretty quickly with a good Internet connection; not sure if there is a mobile option or not (didn’t see one on the page and couldn’t find one in the Android store) but without live TV it’s as good as say, ESPN’s GameCenter service.

We’d still like wall to wall live coverage online. But until that day happens, I guess ShotTracker is our only hope.

Filed Under: Apps, CBS Sports, Golf, Golf Channel, Live Sports Video Consumption, PGA Tagged With: ,

AT&T, Golf Channel Missing the ‘Tiger’ Opp With No Online Video for Pebble Beach

February 10, 2012 by 15 Comments

For the second day in a row, we are incredibly frustrated at the lack of any online video opportunity to watch Tiger Woods in his PGA season debut at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Though the Golf Channel has live coverage today and yesterday, the unique three-course setup for the Pebble Beach Pro-Am means no Tiger TV Thursday or Friday since there are apparently only camera crews at the Pebble Beach course and nothing from the other two courses being used, Spyglass and Monterey Peninsula.

So the reason Tiger isn’t on TV is that he played Spyglass Thursday, and is playing Monterey Peninsula today. We get it, because that means that Tiger will be on TV Saturday and Sunday, playing both days in front of the CBS cameras. But it’s an oversight not to have the game’s biggest draws on some kind of live media for the first two days.

This is a huge missed opportunity for the tournament and for Golf Channel, since there are probably millions of fans like me who would tune in online to catch some Tiger action even while at work. It’s hard to believe that with AT&T adding Wi-Fi clouds to the greater Monterey Peninsula to give fans at the tourney better wireless coverage that we couldn’t at least get someone with a GoPro camera on their head to follow Tiger around and stream that video? Hello sponsor opportunity!

Seriously, not having an online component is really a big error especially for events like golf tournaments where there may be an outsized interest in a single player instead of the traditional multi-camera, multi-announcer setup. I mean, online I have been able to follow what Tiger is doing in words; meanwhile on the Golf Channel they are showing some celebrity comedian eating a plate of ribs. I couldn’t hit the off switch quicker. So tell me how that strategy makes sense either to the event or the sponsors.

Note: the best places to follow El Tigre online today are the Golf Channel home page, where writer Jason Sobel is doing a hole-by-hole Tiger recap in real time. You can also follow Stephanie Wie, who is Tweeting Tiger’s round live. But really, AT&T and Golf Channel, you shoulda done better.

Filed Under: AT&T, CBS Sports, Golf, Golf Channel, PGA, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

AT&T Brings Wi-Fi to Pebble Beach Golf Tourney

February 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

Since they are the title sponsor it’s perhaps no surprise that AT&T is making Wi-Fi available to spectators (patrons?) at this weekend’s PGA Tour stop on the Monterey Peninsula, the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. What’s interesting is that while smartphones and tablets are becoming an integral part of what fans bring to other sporting events, for golf encouraging mobile-device use is a longtime taboo, given the possibility of a cellphone ring interrupting a player’s backswing.

According to the AT&T press release the company has a variety of mobile-device plans for tournament attendees, including free Wi-Fi in select areas around the courses for AT&T customers, as well as a text-message contest and a “digital clubhouse” on the Pebble Beach course where fans can watch the action while taking in some AT&T demos in between the action.

The press release also says there will be a policy to make folks put their devices on silent or vibrate mode, but anyone who’s been on a plane or at a conference knows how well that works. At the AT&T where alcohol will be sold and there will be “hospitality” tents you can bet that the attention span will be even lower. We won’t be able to make it down to Monterey this weekend, but would love to hear any field reports about how well the “use your cell phone for data but keep it quiet” plan works. Especially around El Tigre, who is known to take umbrage at such offenses.

Filed Under: AT&T, Golf, PGA, Social Media, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , ,
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