Pro players use of Social Media, and golf online in general.

I remember the times when the info I got about tour golf was in "Svensk Golf", a journal that I eagerly awaited in my mail box once a month. Once or twice a year TV golf on one of the two channels available. This was not really all that long ago, in the 80's. Then our government allowed ads in TV programs, golf on tv became available, and a guy called Tim Berners-Lee combined a couple of concepts, Internet, hypertext et all to a protocol called HTML, and something called WWW, initially supposed to be a channel for scientists, but became a channel for a couple of more things.

Golf pros was pretty early users. Companies set up sites where players could have "journals" and communication with the fans. I had interesting discussions with a young Justin Rose.

The mid/late 2000´s were really the golden years of online Golf experience. The Masters home page those years was fantastic, with a lot of info about the tournament, not just celeb golfer trivia. Golfers had great blogs, talking about their golf, notably Alexander Norén in our uncouth nothern language. Twitter came along, and Westy, Rory, Poulter had great tweets about their game and some internal banter.

Now, maybe because I am not longer young and supposedly grumpy, I find that things have turned bad. Except maybe for design. And maybe the top tracer thing in TV broadcasts. Everything online is equal or less valuable, information wise, than 10 ys ago. Let alone that no new social media platforms really have been developed in the last 10 years, players write zero zip nada about their own golf and the Golf home pages of all kind are mostly full of celeb golfer trivia. What interests me about the golfers are their golf. Take for instance European Tour player Niklas Lemke. Has finally made it to the big tour, has had a pretty good year until late sundays where things have gone wrong, so he is in a tight spot now on the Road to Dubai.

This week he starts with a 68. Then makes a 76 to miss the cut. With bogeys all over the score card. What happended? Lost his swing, putting yips, stomach disease?

10 years ago I would have been able to find that out. Now I cannot. If I go to his twitter account I can see Federer make a snappy catch of a tennis ball. Not so interesting, frankly.

Is it so? Is player communication with fans worse now? Is online coverage of golf now generally more uninteresting?

> @Hankshank said:

> I remember the times when the info I got about tour golf was in "Svensk Golf", a journal that I eagerly awaited in my mail box once a month. Once or twice a year TV golf on one of the two channels available. This was not really all that long ago, in the 80's. Then our government allowed ads in TV programs, golf on tv became available, and a guy called Tim Berners-Lee combined a couple of concepts, Internet, hypertext et all to a protocol called HTML, and something called WWW, initially supposed to be a channel for scientists, but became a channel for a couple of more things.

>

> Golf pros was pretty early users. Companies set up sites where players could have "journals" and communication with the fans. I had interesting discussions with a young Justin Rose.

>

> The mid/late 2000´s were really the golden years of online Golf experience. The Masters home page those years was fantastic, with a lot of info about the tournament, not just celeb golfer trivia. Golfers had great blogs, talking about their golf, notably Alexander Norén in our uncouth nothern language. Twitter came along, and Westy, Rory, Poulter had great tweets about their game and some internal banter.

>

> Now, maybe because I am not longer young and supposedly grumpy, I find that things have turned bad. Except maybe for design. And maybe the top tracer thing in TV broadcasts. Everything online is equal or less valuable, information wise, than 10 ys ago. Let alone that no new social media platforms really have been developed in the last 10 years, players write zero zip nada about their own golf and the Golf home pages of all kind are mostly full of celeb golfer trivia. What interests me about the golfers are their golf. Take for instance European Tour player Niklas Lemke. Has finally made it to the big tour, has had a pretty good year until late sundays where things have gone wrong, so he is in a tight spot now on the Road to Dubai.

> This week he starts with a 68. Then makes a 76 to miss the cut. With bogeys all over the score card. What happended? Lost his swing, putting yips, stomach disease?

> 10 years ago I would have been able to find that out. Now I cannot. If I go to his twitter account I can see Federer make a snappy catch of a tennis ball. Not so interesting, frankly.

>

> Is it so? Is player communication with fans worse now? Is online coverage of golf now generally more uninteresting?

Great post.

I agree.

And I can sum it all up with one word. Fake.

A lot of what you get now is just filler. Fluff. Fake stuff to keep their name out there. Why ? You can’t be real this day in time. You’ll get crucified for it.

Rory’s social media is one of the worst examples. Totally corporate and bland and meh.

I guess some of the pros saw some potential commercial gain from letting people know about their golf progress but no money came in that way. Or maybe too many troll comments. Remember Westwood getting p*ssed by comments about his putting. I really liked the journals that gave insight though. Like Robert, like Alexander. Especially in times when their swings or putts was out of order.

Any younger forum member with web knowledge that knows why no new social media platforms has emerged in like 100 computer years?

Pretty funny that this forums are still around. Apart from design, pretty much same same as 1985.

Where do you get the info online about golf? Reddit, googling...?

Online golf? Yaaawwwnnn.

My feelings precisely. Who on earth cares about these pampered boys, what they write or car they drive?

There’s still media outlets to get information from. Athletes tend to be more closed these days especially with the amount of keyboard warriors out there. They only let you see what they want you to see. It’s no different than any other sport and the athletes on social media. It’s about their brand.

The good thing about the internet is ready access to info. Not all technology and access is a good thing

Don't disagree in general, but there's lots of stuff I love about the "good old days" in a lot of ways other than just golf.

Masters website has only gotten bigger and better over the years, so you are wrong about that. It is a treasure trove of info. My only gripe, like many other sites, is it has gone "mobile platform" and the look is terrible with the white background and the crap design, but in terms of info it's not a "celeb" based site, lol.

I wouldn't call the growth of Twitter a great thing, and I think you way overstate these "golf blogs" where all these golfers had great blogs and content. Isolated examples.

As far as some guy missing the cut, you saw a heck of a lot more of that tournament and more reported about it than there was 10-15 years ago, your so-called golden era. You can follow his round scoring live online and at The Masters, as of last year, you can follow his round with video online - hmmmmm, The Masters online. Maybe this kid would have been blogging about it, maybe not - in general, probably not. Again, your examples are the few out of a few hundred that really did, and that some folks paid attention to.

Seems like the gripe is that players don't provide enough info these days - if not, blame social media for what it has always been and is only more so now and worse, IMO. There is more to sort through online than ever, and more junk all over the place to sort through. A lot to find online if you want to look, just gets tiresome no doubt.

I agree with bladehunter above - not a lot to be gained by putting much "real" stuff out there, it's all branding these days.

God bless the USA, even in the 80s I got tons of channels, the 4 channels of the 60s and early 70s were long gone by then, lol.

Edit: double post, lol, I do miss that easy "delete" option!

**_Re: ..............Niklas Lemke. Has finally made it to the big tour, has had a pretty good year until late sundays where things have gone wrong, so he is in a tight spot now on the Road to Dubai.This week he starts with a 68. Then makes a 76 to miss the cut. With bogeys all over the score card. What happended? Lost his swing, putting yips, stomach disease?

10 years ago I would have been able to find that out. Now I cannot. If I go to his twitter account I can see Federer make a snappy catch of a tennis ball. Not so interesting, frankly.

Is it so? Is player communication with fans worse now? Is online coverage of golf now generally more uninteresting?_**

Unfortunately, the “golf” part of their lives has lost its luster and been replaced with “the other things” that golfers do. It’s important to “social media fans” to see pictures and hear accounts of Rory swimming with a dolphin at Sea World, Patrick Reed making an attempt to eat the 72-ounce steak at the Big Texan (only to come up 16 ounces short), or watching Beau Hossler and his mom (Amy Balsz) visit the Paul Revere House.

I would like to hear about the golf without over-analyzing it. Is that too much to ask? The rest is fodder for clickers.

As for Niklas Lemke, he could be having marital trouble.

Maybe try asking those folks on Twitter these questions. The platform is there to spark discussion. Find Lemke on twitter and ask why he choked. Content creators won't listen unless you speak out.

It's not just golf. Lots of niche hobbies that once existed on blogs, personal sites, and forums have gone to one-stop shops like Facebook and Reddit. In that mid-late 00's mentioned in the OP, there was just a little bit of a barrier to entry, so specialized websites were reserved for true enthusiasts and were consumed by users who wanted to learn and thusly put in just a little bit of effort into research. As time wore on, platforms like Facebook became ubiquitous with 1 billion (now 2 billion, if memory serves) active users, the barrier to entry has been diluted, and so has the content. Why put the effort into following a dozen different golf sites when you can simply hit "follow" on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter and have all the sites at your fingertips on your mobile device?

I mean, I'm squarely in that Millennial age group, and I've had younger peers and coworkers earnestly think that Facebook (or any web-based apps on their smartphones) were not in fact The Internet..."The Internet" still conjures up images of nerds in white shirts, horn-rimmed glasses, and pocket protectors bashing out pages of HTML code; certainly not hip, attractive, youngsters suavely developing phone apps. But, that's the world that we live in - The Internet is so ubiquitous that there's almost literally no barrier to entry anymore and content has to be curated not for informed enthusiasts, but rather, for John Q. Public who may or may not have any preexisting knowledge of the topic at hand. Things need to be easily digestible to increase exposure and be presented in such a way to draw in all eyes, not just ones from people actively seeking this info.

> @Ferguson said:

> **_Re: ..............Niklas Lemke. Has finally made it to the big tour, has had a pretty good year until late sundays where things have gone wrong, so he is in a tight spot now on the Road to Dubai.This week he starts with a 68. Then makes a 76 to miss the cut. With bogeys all over the score card. What happended? Lost his swing, putting yips, stomach disease?

> 10 years ago I would have been able to find that out. Now I cannot. If I go to his twitter account I can see Federer make a snappy catch of a tennis ball. Not so interesting, frankly.

> Is it so? Is player communication with fans worse now? Is online coverage of golf now generally more uninteresting?_**

>

>

>

>

> Unfortunately, the “golf” part of their lives has lost its luster and been replaced with “the other things” that golfers do. It’s important to “social media fans” to see pictures and hear accounts of Rory swimming with a dolphin at Sea World, Patrick Reed making an attempt to eat the 72-ounce steak at the Big Texan (only to come up 16 ounces short), or watching Beau Hossler and his mom (Amy Balsz) visit the Paul Revere House.

>

>

>

> I would like to hear about the golf without over-analyzing it. Is that too much to ask? The rest is fodder for clickers.

>

>

> As for Niklas Lemke, he could be having marital trouble.

>

Well, since I like to follow tour golf, and love golf in general, the golf part of golf has definitely not lost its luster for me, and never have since I started playing ’81. And I guess for guys frequent in this subforum, it hasn’t either.

I just loved Tiger, even in his prime, talking about swing changes, when everything came together with a stroke he made with an iron 9 and so on.

He has always had the impression of a true golfer to me.

Found this at least semi-new post from Justin Rose, always was a good kid, that is reasonably in line with what I’m looking for.

https://www.justinrose.com/2019/justin-rose-talks-about-masters/

Tiger interacted with all golf fans. These days I feel real human interaction is a lost art.

It was that very interaction that spawned a new generation of golf fans, not just golfers.

Modern players are homogeneous. It's hard to pull for them week in and week out.

Their lives seem to be "dictated" by life coaches and an entourage of helpers and agents.

Tiger didn't/doesn't interact. He has always consciously tried to control every public moment.

I think social media and the Internet have depressingly shown us that a huge swath of the population is dumber than a stick.

Get off my lawn.

social medial has resulted in many young people not having the ability to socialize in real life ... oh the irony

Dylan Fritteli is hilarious on instagram, he comments on everything

If you want to see what's going on with pro golfers, and even interact with them, Instagram is the social media platform you should be on. That's where most of them are active. The LPGA in particular.

Suppose what makes twitter unattractive for the top pros are all the comments. If I dream for a while twitter without the possibility to comment would be the thing. The guys on the plane writing something like "Putter was not hot today, missed cut by two shots" and nothing more said would be good enough for me.

Remember when, I think, Rose, Per-Ulrik Johansson and a scottish challenge tour guy used some kind of journal platform, maybe 2005. After every round they played you got a long resume full of details, thoughts, analysis. It was really too much... But its like that I suppose. When a technology is new everyone fiddles around with it, creativity is flowing and fun things emerge. Then after a while it kind of stabilizes, or rather freezes(looking for the english word here) into something that does not evolve. Computer gaming is another example. For those of you who remember Armstrong on the moon and got in contact with computers early, you remember the crazy creativity, coming up with new funny games, initially text based, later with simple graphics. Then comes Doom and Quake, and thats what still is played 20 years later, with some improved graphics but pretty much same same. OK, on phones there are still some game creativity, but nothing compared to the good ol' days...

> @Hankshank said:

> Suppose what makes twitter unattractive for the top pros are all the comments. If I dream for a while twitter without the possibility to comment would be the thing. The guys on the plane writing something like "Putter was not hot today, missed cut by two shots" and nothing more said would be good enough for me.

>

> Remember when, I think, Rose, Per-Ulrik Johansson and a scottish challenge tour guy used some kind of journal platform, maybe 2005. After every round they played you got a long resume full of details, thoughts, analysis. It was really too much... But its like that I suppose. When a technology is new everyone fiddles around with it, creativity is flowing and fun things emerge. Then after a while it kind of stabilizes, or rather freezes(looking for the english word here) into something that does not evolve. Computer gaming is another example. For those of you who remember Armstrong on the moon and got in contact with computers early, you remember the crazy creativity, coming up with new funny games, initially text based, later with simple graphics. Then comes Doom and Quake, and thats what still is played 20 years later, with some improved graphics but pretty much same same. OK, on phones there are still some game creativity, but nothing compared to the good ol' days...

These social media folks would say these are the "good new days." When I started in sales I had a bag phone and then they stepped me up to a the first clam shell Motorola Startac.

Just curious - where do you think the dark web plays into this?

How about the blog activity at Seamus and Mackensie Bags?

Does it really impact the game?

> @"Holy Moses" said:

> Rory’s social media is one of the worst examples. Totally corporate and bland and meh.

and if he spoke his mind on various subjects hed get crucified.He cant win so he wont play. Social media is a land of wolves now, you have to have stones to be yourself because one small vocal segment of society wants diversity in everything except thought...

> @lowheel said:

> > @"Holy Moses" said:

> > Rory’s social media is one of the worst examples. Totally corporate and bland and meh.

>

> and if he spoke his mind on various subjects hed get crucified.He cant win so he wont play. Social media is a land of wolves now, you have to have stones to be yourself because one small vocal segment of society wants diversity in everything except thought...

>

>

>

I hope people take a moment to let the truth of this post sink in.

Social media is an absolute s*** hole now.

> @ebrasmus21 said:

> > @lowheel said:

> > > @"Holy Moses" said:

> > > Rory’s social media is one of the worst examples. Totally corporate and bland and meh.

> >

> > and if he spoke his mind on various subjects hed get crucified.He cant win so he wont play. Social media is a land of wolves now, you have to have stones to be yourself because one small vocal segment of society wants diversity in everything except thought...

> >

> >

> >

>

> I hope people take a moment to let the truth of this post sink in.

>

> Social media is an absolute s*** hole now.

>

We on social media, yo ; )

> @bscinstnct said:

> > @ebrasmus21 said:

> > > @lowheel said:

> > > > @"Holy Moses" said:

> > > > Rory’s social media is one of the worst examples. Totally corporate and bland and meh.

> > >

> > > and if he spoke his mind on various subjects hed get crucified.He cant win so he wont play. Social media is a land of wolves now, you have to have stones to be yourself because one small vocal segment of society wants diversity in everything except thought...

> > >

> > >

> > >

> >

> > I hope people take a moment to let the truth of this post sink in.

> >

> > Social media is an absolute s*** hole now.

> >

>

> We on social media, yo ; )

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We are not immune, either.

BUT most of the time we alright!

What bugs me is when Rory puts something out there referencing a line from a Souleye Treadway song and we're all supposed to "get it."

Also so bad when all the Rolex players or the PGA Tour or some other company takes over a player’s Twitter and makes them all tweet the same exact thing.

There is a middle ground. You don’t have to be an Ian Poulter getting people fired or getting into arguments with nameless people on Twitter. But a corporate on social media is not where you want to be either.

> There is a middle ground. You don’t have to be an Ian Poulter getting people fired or getting into arguments with nameless people on Twitter. But a corporate on social media is not where you want to be either.

Agreed, well said.

> @lowheel said:

> > @"Holy Moses" said:

> > Rory’s social media is one of the worst examples. Totally corporate and bland and meh.

>

> and if he spoke his mind on various subjects hed get crucified.He cant win so he wont play. Social media is a land of wolves now, you have to have stones to be yourself because one small vocal segment of society wants diversity in everything except thought...

>

>

>

Tiger could get the WGC-HSBC Champions, PGA Tour China and the Hong Kong Open cancelled in one tweet.

It would have been awesome to see the Twitter accounts of like Jack, Arnie, Player, Hogan, not to mention all the nutty characters on tour back in the day. Especially given how much less PC you could be back then.

Be like,

GP-I just did 1000 sit ups!

JN-That's great, Gary, I need to trim down myself

AP-Yeah, well I'm doing some 12 ounce curls

BH-Shut up, ya punks.

> @"Holy Moses" said:

> Also so bad when all the Rolex or the PGA Tour orsome other company takes over a player’s Twitter and makes them all tweet the same exact thing.

>

> There is a middle ground. You don’t have to be an Ian Poulter getting people fired or getting into arguments with nameless people on Twitter. But a corporate on social media is not where you want to be either.

The problem is that the middle ground is so narrow. As I mentioned in the Rickie thread, there is literally no upside for a traditional celebrity (someone who didn't get their "fame" from social media) to post something on social media without first filtering it through a public relations person.

[Here is an example of how narrow the middle ground is on social media](

Matt Kuchar doesn't even participate in social media as far as I know, and it managed to greatly tarnish his reputation. Now everything he does with suspect behavior is criticized and gets major attention.

Yes, there will be idiots and trolls on social media regardless. However, you have no control over how successful those idiots and trolls can be at making something viral.

Between press conferences, interviews, and even on-course behavior, the odds are high enough that there will be a candid moment that will make its way through the "land of wolves" anyways. There is no sense increasing the odds by posting unscripted thoughts and videos to social media.