Tours slowly warm to social media

Fans can get quick fix in designated spots

A walk around the Robert Trent Jones Golf course at the Quicken Loans National in Gainesville, Va., in late July feels oddly like a blast from the past.

It’s not just the colonial architecture. Among the scores of people walking the greens to follow Rickie Fowler or hustling to watch Tiger Woods practice, few are carrying their smartphones in hand.

Nearly two-thirds of American adults, 64%, own a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. That number is up from 35% in 2011.

Golf, traditionally, has been slow to catch up. Augusta National, home of the year’s first major, the Masters, maintains a strict no-phone policy. This year was the first time the U.S. Golf Association allowed fans to bring their phones to the U.S. Open.

“In today’s day and age, especially with a lot of the younger players being out, it’s a great way to grow the game,” Fowler said. “Getting in contact with the younger generation, I feel like they spend more time on social media than they do watching TV, when you just look at how much they use their phone or are on their phone. It’s a direct way we can connect with them.”

Other golf organizations have adapted more quickly: The PGA Tour and the PGA of America, whose PGA Championship starts Thursday at Whistling Straits Golf Course in Sheboygan, Wis., allow phones but have strict policies that mandate phones must be on silent or vibrate. Phones can be used only for an actual phone call in designated areas.

But technology moves fast, and golf now has to deal with social media.

“We can’t depend on fans to sit down in front of the TV on Sunday at 4 p.m., though we’d love that,” said Ty Votaw, the PGA Tour’s chief marketing officer. “We have to develop content for our fans based on when and where they want it.”

For the Tour and the PGA of America, the answer to preserving golf ’s behavioral code, culture and tradition while catering to device-dependent fans seems to be to take a top-down approach.

Both organizations provide specific areas for social media use at certain tournaments.

Not unlike the areas designated for phone calls, these social hubs let fans on site scratch their social media itch without violating the Tour’s photo policy. Neither the PGA of America nor the PGA Tour allows photos to be taken during championship rounds, and video recording is prohibited at all times.

PGA of America digital strategy director Joni Lockridge said a social media center would be just one of the initiatives helping fans stay connected at this year’s PGA Championship.

“Right as you get off the bus, you walk by an area that’s going to have a huge ‘#PGAChamp’ physical sign,” Lockridge said. “What we saw in the past was we had a physical sign for ‘This is major’ and people were sharing it everywhere, so this time we made sure that we incorporated the Twitter logo.

The PGA of America also will outfit Whistling Straits with free Wi-Fi, will use Snapchat “as it’s relevant,” Lockridge said, and is testing Periscope, a live streaming app that makes published content available for 24 hours at a time.

The PGA Tour used Snapchat and Periscope at The Players Championship in May and the Phoenix Open in January.

Votaw and Lockridge understand phone use is extremely difficult to manage onsite. Ultimately, they’re more concerned with enhancing the fan experience than they are with policing phone use.

“If someone wants to take an incidental shot of a player walking by or a drive on the 18th hole, that’s something that, one, is tough to police, but, two, speaks more to what they’re experiencing than it does to some nefarious reason for them to put this content on their social media,” Votaw said.

Although the PGA of America has pushed multiple social media and digital incentives ahead of the PGA Championship — for example, a free app that lets fans find specific players immediately and easily browse the course on their phones — in terms of fan experience at tournaments, Lockridge said, connectivity isn’t always king.

“Our most recent research indicated fans wanted better bathrooms more than they wanted better Wi-Fi,” Lockridge said. “The most important thing is what you experience offline and not necessary what you experience online.”