Weirfan
I think the 17th is a fabulous hole, undoubtedly my favorite hole of the entire layout. But overall the course just seems a bit too artificial for my tastes. Then again, I tend to favor the more traditional style layouts. I was never a huge fan of Doral either, so maybe it has more to do with the typical Florida style layout than anything else (superficial mounding, lots of water, etc..) Yet I do like the Honda Classic and Bay Hill, and both those courses have a lot of the same characteristics I guess.
The streaming viewership aspect, imo, has yet to make a sizable difference as far as taking away normal television viewing (at least for golf). Although there's no doubt that in the coming years it will have a significant impact as far as a lot of other sports. I don't think there's any doubt that the PGA Tour is already looking ahead and preparing for that inevitability. And when that does happen, it'll be interesting to see how they go about marketing it, and how that will all transition with the tournament sponsors, advertisements, etc.
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that a majority of the viewers watching golf currently are older, as in those who would still rather watch the program via cable tv as opposed to online streaming. The other aspect is within the streaming concept itself and the potential features available to the viewer. If the only available-viewing option is live, then that's going to be a huge negative to those of us who've grown to enjoy the ability to DVR the coverage and FFW through commercial ads a few hours later watching it delayed.
That ability to FFW through commercials and all of the other nonsense is really the only thing holding my interest currently. I might make an exception with maybe the Masters, since commercials are limited to only 4 minutes per hour during the usual telecast. And their streaming coverage online is excellent, as I'm usually watching it prior to the live televised coverage starting. I'm sure to some degree that the online streaming is fairly significant that week for golf, but mostly because they seem to improve their online product each year. It is fantastic, especially if you're using a wide-screen computer monitor. They allegedly implemented a viewing app for Apple TV this past tournament, although I have Apple TV and searched all of my available apps and couldn't locate it. But that would be an awesome option too.
But given where things are heading, I think the PGA Tour would be wise to consider creating their own network and do something similar, if they're not in that planning process already.
Then, of course, the question is whether they'll require an annual fee to subscribe, and if so - how much.
And one last thing - let's assume that a majority of people will completely do away with cable tv at some point and convert to online streaming for most of their sports/entertainment viewing. What impact will that have on download speeds? I currently have the quickest/best online package available for residential customers, yet there are times when it's impossible to watch something because so many other people within the network territory are also online, like peak hours for instance... Sunday night, 8 p.m. Although this seems to be the direction we're heading for sure, I'm not so sure that most internet service providers are prepared for that type of demand quite yet. But you can bet that when they upgrade their servers and overall infrastructures to better handle that type of increased volume - those upgrade expenses are going to be quite significant, and naturally passed on to the consumer.
