PGA of America Does A Lot Of Things Right #PGACHAMP

Following the PGA Championship from GolfBlogger World Headquarters (and remembering my on-course experience at the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills), I’ve been struck by the many things the PGA does right—especially with regard to coverage of its premiere event.

The television coverage is extensive, running for six hours each day of the tournament. But the PGA extends this with some pretty good online viewing. With coverage beginning at 10am, they’ve got cameras following the marquee groups, as well as stationed at the par 3s. One neat thing about the online coverage is that it’s interspersed with lessons from teaching pros. I’ve actually found a lot of those interesting.

DirecTv also has several channels, but of course this is limited to those with satellite dishes.

The streaming video app for the computer has several neat features, such as a 360 cam, which allows you to pan and scan around the 15th hole, and a course flyover. Small apps within the app offer pop up windows with leaderboards, scorecards, and live chat on Twitter, Facebook and Linked In.

If you’re not near a television or your computer, you can follow the PGA Championship through a free iPhone app (where’s the Blackberry App for serious people?). My understanding is that it offers the same functionality of the browser app.

The PGA also has a twitter feed (@pga_com) and a twitter hashtag (#PGAChamp) to let people follow the tournament that way. I don’t know if they allow live tweets from the course as The Crowne Plaza Invitational did, but they should. TNT’s coverage regularly puts the hashtag in the lower left hand corner of the broadcast.

On the PGA.Com site, you can follow both the official twitter feeds, and the hash tag comments. That same page has a Cover It Live app installed.

Two things they’re missing, though:

First, I’d like to see some streaming radio coverage. And second, I think the website’s leaderboard needs upgrading. I like what the PGA Tour does at its regular events, where you can select a group of players and see a graphical representation of how they’re doing from hole to hole.

Still, I’m convinced that there’s more—and more innovative—coverage of the PGA Championship than of any of the other Majors.

1 thought on “PGA of America Does A Lot Of Things Right #PGACHAMP”

  1. I am missing the Shot Tracker and the Play-By-Play on the website.

    That said, the video streaming is better to my computer than perhaps any other golf tourney/website to date. 

    One thing that I would like is the ability to do a 30 second rewind on the video player.  You can drag the position indicator, but that isn’t very precise.  The neat clipmaker is cool though, to make your own highlights to put on Facebook or Twitter.

    Reply

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