The Players is the biggest event of the year for Ponte Vedra in Florida, as it is for the Ponte Vedra Recorder.
Retail has black Friday, Hallmark has Mother’s Day, Valentines et al. and May 5 through May 11 we have The Players. This year’s tournament (sans Tiger Woods) marks the next step in the evolution of the tournament, in terms of its interactive qualities and experiences and the fan-centric environment.
The Recorder has created a Web site for the event that’ll go live in a day or so to exclusively cater to tournament coverage, which also marks the next step in evolution for our publication. It’s sad, and a little embarrassing, but we’re finally embracing the potential of having a quality Web presence to publish our products, but it’s happening and I’m excited about it.
At the root of this excitement is Twitter. Although cell phones will be strictly prohibited from the tournament course during the proper tournament, the PGA Tour has been sending Tweets several times each day to update ‘followers’ on activities at the course.
2008PLAYERS is their screen name and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed following their tweets and it’ll be invaluable once we’re let out of the gate to pursue tournament coverage – assuming our corporate IT department will remove Twitter from their content filters…
Within the next few days or next week, I’ll pursue the person (people) behind 2008PLAYERS for a feature story that will run on our tournament Web site. I’m excited about that.
I was excited about posting pics and location updates to Brightkite, but there’s a strict no-cell phone policy on tournament grounds so I’ll have to do that via the media tent, assuming I’ll have time to upload to our Web site and Brightkite together, but that’s what I’m hoping to do – to give everyone who’s interested a chance to follow along with tournament happenings ‘behind the rope.’
If you’d like to follow me for fan-based tournament coverage, hit me up on Twitter as jrwoodward in Ponte Vedra and check out our Web site.
