Sports Technology & Communications News from Around the World

The United States Golf Association (USGA), the governing body of the sport in the United States and its national association of golf clubs, has created a wide variety of digital applications, devices and technologies for golf fans who want to keep abreast of the action at the 2010 U.S. Open. Said event will take place from June 17-20 at the Pebble Beach Golf Links in California.

The USGA has been working in cooperation with its corporate partner IBM on these new features, will which confer the capability to access live streaming, up-to-the-moment scores, and breaking news from homes, offices or anywhere fans may be at any moment.

The USGA is aiming to enhance fans’ enjoyment as well on the official website, www.USOPEN.com. The USGA aims to augment its flagship LIVE Marquee Group coverage with a host of exciting new capabilities. This year, it is debuting an interactive play tracker to modernize and expand the traditional golf leaderboard by including an overview map to enable viewers to gain a birds’-eye view of the action on the course, as well as a special heat-mapping feature with green, red and gray indicators to let fans know at a glance how hard each part of the course is playing. Colors will differ via scoring averages per hole.

Other features of the Website include HD Live Streaming across various devices, bringing LIVE Marquee Streaming to the iPhone (News - Alert) and other key mobile browsers; a U.S. Open Facebook Fan Page with news, highlights, and blogs; an integrated Twitter Mixx channel that aggregates live Tweets from fans through the American Express (News - Alert) Experience tent, commentators and other experts; a Rules Corner where USGA Rules officials can comment on rulings; a new Experience History feature developed by the USGA and the World Golf Tour, through which fans can watch historical shots from previous U.S. Opens and replicate it; and an Enhanced Course Section that lets viewers experience the course setup at Pebble Beach through high-resolution images, walkthroughs and flyovers.

Another special feature present from June 17-20 will be CourseCast radio and TV devices courtesy of American Express, a USGA corporate partner, to benefit American Express Cardmembers.

Alex Withers, USGA managing director of digital media, said that these features offered a level of engagement that was simply nonexistent just a few years ago. The USOPEN.com community, he said, had grown to 6 million fans in just under two years. Strong growth was also to be seen in the mobile space and given the use of social media tools to share information about and from the championships.

In related news, Panduit recently released data center red paper with IBM (News - Alert).