DEEP DIGITAL DIVE INTO TOUR FOR ESPN+
Kapalua is busier than ever to start the new year, a development that goes beyond the largest winners-only field in Hawaii or even fans returning to the Plantation Course.
ESPN+ starts its nine-year digital rights deal with the PGA Tour at the Sentry Tournament of Champions.
“PGA Tour Live on ESPN+” features live coverage on four simultaneous feeds from all four rounds, which adds more than 3,200 new hours of live streaming and a total of more than 4,300 exclusive hours over 35 tournaments.
“What fans are going to see is more than triple, almost quadruple the hours of coverage to choose from based on four new feeds,” said Chris Wandell, vice president of media business development at the PGA Tour.
ESPN+ was launched in April 2018 — the first round of the RBC Heritage was the first event streamed on the service — and now has upward of 17 million subscribers.
Viewers will be getting a better deal at $6.99 a month, down from $9.99 a month on NBC Sports Gold and Amazon Prime, and a lot more options.
The biggest change is the menu. The two featured groups will be on one of the ESPN+ channels. A second channel will be devoted to the “marquee group” that will be determined each tournament (hint: if Tiger Woods returns this year, he likely will be in that group). That channel will show every shot from every player.
A third channel will be devoted to featured holes, primarily the par 3s or other pivotal holes, such as the 10th at Riviera, the 17th at the TPC Scottsdale or perhaps the reachable par-4 12th hole at the TPC Sawgrass.
“Every player that comes through you’ll see him play at least four holes,” Wandell said.
The other channel will be considered the main feed, a collection of video pulled together from all the other channels. That essentially would be a traditional presentation.
“It is significantly more content on one feed leveraging shots that are cut from each of the other three feeds,” Wandell said. “So it will be a producer in a chair bouncing between group one, group two, group three and any of the four holes, to effectively create this really compelling channel for ESPN+ users.”
John Lasker, vice president of digital media programming for ESPN, believes this will be the most engaged feed of the four channels based on what ESPN has learned from doing the last two PGA Championships. He said it would be most comparable to what viewers will see from network coverage in the afternoon.
“It feels more traditional to the fan,” Lasker said. “It has a more broader scope, gets you more golf shots, telling the story of the entire tournament.”
All abilities champs
Kapalua is hosting more than just PGA Tour winners this week.
The Sentry Tournament of Champions says the top all-abilities golfers from four countries have been invited to play in the inaugural ISPS Handa All Abilities Champions Playoff, which will take place during the opening two rounds.
Today, the four players will tee off on the Bay Course at Kapalua as a foursome and play two 18-hole matches simultaneously among each other. On Friday, they will play nine holes of stroke play on the Bay Course and then the front nine on the Plantation Course right after the last group from the PGA Tour event has teed off.
The trophy presentation will take place on the ninth green. leading to another question: Is the next member of golf ’s most elite club likely to be Rory McIlroy or Jordan Spieth?
McIlroy has gone to Augusta National the last seven years with a shot at getting the career Grand Slam with only a serious chance at it in 2018, when he played in the final group with Patrick Reed and shot 74.
Spieth captured the third leg in 2017 and now needs only the PGA Championship. His game appears to be back in order after winning the Texas Open. Unlike the Masters, the PGA Championship moves around and some venues are more suitable than others. Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, would seem to provide one of the better opportunities for Spieth.
Collin’s climb
The players were chosen from top all-abilities golf tournaments around the world — Brendan Lawlor (World Invitational), Johan Kammerstad (Australian All Abilities Championship), Juan Postigo Arce (European Championship for Golfers with Disability) and Chad Peifer (U.S. Disabled Open).
Lawlor called it an “unbelievable opportunity for us to put disability golf on the world stage.”
Cink and son
Stewart Cink is back at Kapalua with the rest of last year’s winners, and son Reagan returns as his caddie.
That wasn’t the plan when it started.
“Originally it was to do one tournament, but it was the Safeway Open, and that plan was quickly expanded into further into the year,” Cink said.
He won that Safeway Open in September 2020, and they were having so much fun together, they kept going. With Reagan getting married in July, they figured it was best for the son to stop caddying after the Tour Championship.
“It’s just not a good way to start a marriage, for him on the road and for her working at home,” Cink said. “Then she decided to take her job part time and be able to travel more with us. It was up to them. We weren’t going to stand in the way of him saying, ‘I want to keep going and Olivia is going to start traveling.’ I wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re having a blast.”
Collin Morikawa lost one opportunity to reach No. 1 in the world when he gave up a five-shot lead in the final round of the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. He gets another shot at Kapalua, though Jon Rahm will have a say in defending his top spot.
But this is about more than the No. 1 ranking, which comes and goes.
Morikawa has played two full seasons on the PGA Tour and already has two majors, and his profile gets stronger by the month. To win another major this year would put him in elite territory.
Dating to 1960, only six players have won majors in three successive years — Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka.