Tiger Woods on the Bus

Today I watched Tiger Woods play golf on the bus. Thanks to the PGA Championship application for the iPhone I was able to watch a couple of holes between home and work. Having an iPhone app is nothing new for the major tournaments, the Masters was the first to launch one back in April. It was actually really good, which is surprising given that the folks in Augusta are a little antiquated when it comes to technology. For example, they will not license footage of their tournament for the Internet, so if you make a commercial with Masters footage, you can't put it on your website.

Back to the PGA Championship app. This is the first one that has actually cost money, although it is only $1.99. It has some cool new 3.0 features including push info on five players of your choice, so you can get score updates even if the app is not on. Having lived with it for a day now, I am loving the video features: you can follow a entire round of one marquee group in the morning and one in the afternoon (needless to say Tiger was in the AM group and Phil was in the PM group); and you can watch the action at the par three's. They are also letting you vote on the marquee groups for tomorrow. The leaderboard is a little glitchy and hard to navigate, but it does give you a lot of stats. Adding the players I cared about to the favorites made it easier to deal with. The alerts are actually starting to bug me. I think I may cut them back to just get a notice when my favs are teeing off and when they finish. The hole by hole scoring for five players is too intrusive. Finally, I have to say the full on website is pretty good too. They are streaming the network coverage as well as the video you get on the app. They have a lot more stats and you can also live twitter with the TV commentators. All said, I would recommend this app for the real golf fan.