Week in Review - September 8, 2014

It was an off week on the LPGA Tour, so we’ll take this opportunity to showcase a few social activities we’ve done earlier this year.

Twitter Backs 

As you’ve probably noticed, the players who Tweet have their Twitter handles on the back of their caddie bibs.  The idea came to us in 2012 when we saw a photo of a minor league hockey team with their team’s Twitter handle on the back of their jerseys.  Light bulbs went off and we debuted the player’s Twitter handles at the 2012 Wegmans LPGA Championship.

The program works well for exposure both on the course and on TV.  When a caddie walks past fans who are standing near the ropes, the fans can quickly see the player’s handle and begin to follow them.   Fans can also see the handles on TV when the caddie lines up the player.  The camera angle is perfect for this and every time it’s done, you can hear our social media department say “yeah, baby”! :)

The logistics for each tournament is quite tedious, but well worth it.  Each week when the final field is established on Tuesday evening, the players in the field who have Twitter handles are determined and their caddie backs are pulled from one of five groups of names.  On average, there’s about 90% of the field who Tweet, so those are packed up and sent off to the tournament in time for their Monday start.

Once the tournament ends, the caddie backs are sent back to LPGA HQ and inventoried back into the group they were pulled from. 

We continue to find ways to connect the players with the fans socially, and feel that the Twitter backs are a unique and effective way to accomplish this.

Click here for a complete list of players and their Twitter handles.

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Time-Lapse Fun

We’ve had a lot of GoPro fun this year including a few time-lapse videos.  The camera is set in a stable area and attached to an external battery pack.  We “set it and forget it” for at least two hours.  You can usually get about a minute’s worth of video with an hour of recording.  You can set the camera to take a photo every 1, 3 or 5 seconds. 

Here’s a time-lapse that was created on the 18^th green during Sunday’s final round of the Wegmans LPGA Championship.  The camera was strapped to the grandstand and was set to take a photo every 5 seconds.  This video includes the final groups coming in, the playoff between Brittany Lincicome and eventual winner, Inbee Park, the awards ceremony and the fireworks display to celebrate 38 great years in Rochester.

Look for more creative uses of the GoPro from us in the near future!

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#ALSIceBucketChallenge

During the Portland Classic Presented by Cambia Health Solutions, our rules official accepted the Ice Bucket Challenge from the rules officials from the Symetra Tour.  It was all captured by the Golf Channel for your viewing pleasure:

They’ve called out the Executive Leadership Team from the LPGA, who, by coincidence, will be in Evian, France for the Evian Championship this week.  We can’t think of a better place for the executives to accept the challenge and douse themselves with Evian water… but wait… isn’t France known for not having much ice? :)

See ya next week.