My proposal: "www.pgatour.com/tour-zone"

As I enjoyed the Thanksgiving break and reflected on upcoming career conversations I'm hoping for, I spent a truly embarrassing amount of time playing with the Twitter application "Echofon" on my iPhone. For the dual followers of my @Michaelott23 twitter account and "Never Three Putt," you'll undoubtedly attest to the bombardment of tweets you got from me; although many of them were about European soccer.

Regardless, I noticed the --bordering on addict level-- twittering going on by some Tour stars; most noticeably Bubba Watson, Trevor Immelman, Paula Creamer, and Ian Poulter (future Tour star Rickie Fowler is worth mentioning as well). While their tweets ranged from Paula Creamer (and I'm not being misogynistic) talking about her new hair style, Bubba Watson talking about his Thanksgiving day charity work and religious services, to Trevor Immelman's fan hood of the Orlando Magic, each Tour star brought an interesting component to the twitter and social media world.


On Twitter, I currently follow:

Grame McDowell (@Grame_McDowell), Jamie Lovemark (@jamielovemark), Rich Beem (@richbeem), Kevin Streelman (@Streels54), Natalie Gulbis (@natalie_gulbis), Stewart Cink (@stewartcink), PGA Tour (@pgatour), Suzann Pettersen (@suzannpettersen), Annika Sorenstam (@annika59), Davis Love III (@Love3d), Geoff Ogilvy (@geoffogilvy), Trevor Immelman (@trevorimmelman), Paul Casey (@Paul_Casey), Peter Jacobsen (@Jake Trout), Chris DiMarco (@ChrisDiMarco), Brittany Lincicome (@Brittany1golf), Bubba Watson (@bubbawatson), Rickie Fowler (@rickiefowlerPGA), Rory McIlroy (@rorsmcilroy), John Daly (@PGA_JohnDaly), and more . . .

While at times I may over-discuss the Twitter phenomenon, its symbolic powers of transparency and fan-courtship are undeniable. Twitter is not alone in its powers from the social media world: Facebook, personal websites, video blogging, etc. each bring similar, but distinct, notions to the athlete/fan relationship.

With that said, my recommendation for a capitalization by the PGA Tour on social media, and similar online exclusive, player driven content is a sub-site to the PGA Tour's web site: "www.pgatour.com/tour-zone."

Create the exclusive home for Internet content created exclusively by PGA Tour stars. Just as I have on the upper-part of the right-hand column on "Never Three Putt," the site would have RSS feeds of the Twitter accounts of PGA Tour stars, links to their personal web sites, their Facebook accounts. That's the easy and perhaps most powerful part; providing a well-detailed access for fans to their favorite golfer's social media.

The next component would be an online diary and online video blog.

Each week, one to as many as is appropriate PGA Tour star would devote time to online blogging (100-300 word posts) perhaps as many as three times a day (before the round, after the round, and again in the evening). The posts would not need to be scholarly or literary works, but rather a brief, even run-on sentence of what the golfer is doing to prepare, where they had dinner, their thoughts on the round, what they worked on at the range afterward, what they were going to watch on television, etc.. Obviously these posts could be edited and uploaded by a single PGA Tour employee -- and probably should be.

For a video blog, one tour player would be selected each week and a single PGA Tour employee would shadow them and shoot raw footage to be uploaded to the site. While there may be some editing for fluidness and quality control, the raw nature of the video blog would be its most appealing attribute.