More Incredible Golf Technology Online – PGA Shot Tracker
I tend to follow golf more online than other traditional media outlets. It’s most likely because the non-major PGA tournaments don’t get the traditional media coverage that other sports get. The good news is my consumption of PGA information is apparently pretty average because the Tour’s online experience is phenomenal.
Last year during Tiger Woods’s return to golf at the Masters I wrote about how much I enjoyed the online experience of that tournament. As I get a bit older I’m enjoying more and more gold, and today I jumped on the PGA website to check the leaderboard. What I came up on was Shot Tracker, a shot by shot tracking interface that provides a WEALTH of information. Users can find a lot of information about individual players, compare those to the rest of the field and even averages throughout the week.
This experience interests me for several reasons. One, I can follow golf tournaments like never before. Watching tournaments live on TV is great, but you generally see the same players (Tiger, Phil, the old player that is somehow playing well, and the leaders). I want to watch other players. This online experience allows me to do that and then some.
The second reason it interests me is because I expect this kind of extra interaction to be built into TV viewing sooner rather than later. With the introduction of new TV consumption models such as Apple TV & Google TV consumers should expect to see technologies that allow viewers greater interaction with information than ever before. And you won’t need two different machines to do it (watching TV while a computer is on your lap).
To me this is the beginning of a new information collection method. I want to watch Tiger make his putt on hole 4 while still seeing what Rickie Fowler is doing on the back 9. These models exist, it’s just a matter of time before they work together. And I’m looking forward to it.
I agree! If the player isn’t in the top 4-5, or a mega star, he doesn’t exists as far as TV is concerned.
iPhone app provides a nice shot-by-shot data stream. But I can’t find it on the pgatour site. Do you happen to know where it is located (accessed with a button on the app that isn’t in the html on the mobile web page). I suspect the data is hidden deliberately, but it sure would be nice to access. Repeated emails to pgatour.com return nada.