Get It To Them fast

摘要

On Thursday, Feb. 20, spike mcroy made his fourth shot on the par-five 11th hole at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif., putting him one stroke under par on the first day of the PGA Tour's Nis-san Open golf tournament. McRoy did it by knocking his tee shot 270 yards to the intermediate rough, followed by a 228-yard second stroke that put the ball 72 yards from the cup, and a third swing that landed on the green. At 3:29 p.m., McRoy's 13-foot, 4-inch putt clinked into the bottom of the hole for a birdie. You didn't have to walk the course with the gallery to witness this performance or even get the Golf Channel on cable. McRoy's outing, and that of 143 other pro golfers in the tournament, was reported stroke by stroke, as it happened, over PGA Tour's Web site. The effort that goes into collecting and disseminating the results of every stroke of every golfer―even a middle-of-the-pack grinder like Spike, who wound up missing the cut at the Nissan Open―shows just how far some organizations are going to deliver nothing less than up-to-the-second information to their customers. "We think it's a really interesting and exciting opportunity for the fan," says Steve Evans, VP of IS with PGA Tour Inc., a membership organization for pro golfers.