Cellphones embraced as PR tool
Kathy and Steve Stidhem remember the days when you had to sneak your cellphone into the Memorial Tournament. The Dublin couple did it because everybody did, because going out without a phone feels about as natural these days as going out without pants.
“We hid them,” Kathy Stidhem said. Well, “we used to.”
The days of lying to the cellphone cops at the gate are long gone. This year, the Stidhems sat in the grass at Muirfield texting and catching up on work email
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without getting any grief from tournament volunteers.
No one blinked an eye, either, when Brian Chavez of Marietta raised his cup to the empty 18th hole and snapped a picture, a family tradition of capturing beer-plus-scenery and texting it to those who aren’t there.
“I had to sneak that pic in” at other events, he said.
Three years ago, losing the battle to keep phones off the course, the Memorial — and the PGA tour — gave up and said fine, just keep them silent. Now, though, the Memorial is more actively courting cellphone users, hoping to transform the former nuisance into something that benefits the tournament.
“You allow them and start to figure out how to control it and make it more of an asset,” said tournament director Dan Sullivan.
So this year, for the first time, ChirpVision offered free Wi-Fi stations and an app that lets users watch live, streaming golf video at the tournament. Digital boards around the course reminded patrons of the tournament’s Twitter hashtag (#theMemorial) and instructed them to follow and post on Facebook and Instagram.
There were plenty of cellphone-charging stations, and the tournament even tweeted to the folks at the course, rewarding them for checking their cells: TRIVIA TIME: How did @jacknicklaus get his nickname, the Golden Bear? Be the 1st w/ the answer @ the Digital Hub in Patron Village & WIN!
“We’re getting there,” Sullivan said of the tournament’s efforts to both integrate and control cellphones on the course. “We’re not perfect.”
And maybe it’s surprising, but there are still large numbers of people who don’t bury their heads in their phones. On the course, they watch the action through their eyes, not their tiny iPhone screens. They read maps. Paper maps. They pause at Muirfield’s entrance and glance over an ancient form of social media: a scoreboard where every name and number is written by a real live person.
Paul Pope, a former golf pro from Grove City, spends hours meticulously lettering those sheets, only to tear them down and do it all again the next day. He works in a small tent behind the board, a laptop on his work table feeding him the scores. (Yes, irony. He sees it.)
Pope used to spend half the year on the road touring with golf tournaments, but business has dwindled. Technology has eclipsed art. He imagines one day the Muirfield board will be digital, too.
“Eventually, it will happen,” he said. “The tradition has gone away.”
But not at this tournament. He stood there sweeping marker over paper, finding grace in the curl of a 6, the swoop of a 2. He chronicled the rise and fall of men battling the wind and their minds. It wasn’t flashy, but people noticed. Yesterday morning, as patrons began to trickle in, a man and his son walked by the handwritten board and the boy paused, wondering what it was.
“I believe,” the father said, “it’s called calligraphy.”