Sep

11

On Press Row- Deutsche Bank Championship

September 11, 2007 | by Keith | Categories On Press Row |

You would think covering a professional golf tournament would be a challenge. It’s virtually impossible to follow all the action because so much of it is spread out across acres of land with dozens of golfers on the course at the same time.

The PGA makes that challenge more surmountable through their elaborate press centers at tour events. I was given access to the media area at the Deutsche Bank Championship held at the TPC of Boston over Labor Day weekend. The Deutsche Bank Championship is the second tournament on the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup playoff series.

At the Deutsche Bank all media activity was housed in a two floor structure constructed just off the 18th green. This temporary edifice was climate controlled with plenty of working space for the press. It also came complete with all the technological resources the PGA has to offer.

The first floor of the media center consisted of an interview room, a working area for photographers, and a cafeteria. The second floor housed the main work area for the press and any anyone else associated with the tournament. There were a total of 90 spaces for print reporters, organized in such a way that two reporters shared a work area.

Also on the second floor were three small, and somewhat private, radio broadcast booths, used over the course of the week for talk shows and any other radio reports from the tournament.

Because this was part of the PGA’s FedEX Cup series, the number of media requests for the tournament was higher than in years past. Over 280 credentials were awarded to the press this year.

The PGA hires a public relations firm to run its media center. At the Deutsche Bank, the media center fell under the purview of Brener Zwikel & Associates (BZA), a PR firm with offices on both coasts. BZA had four full time individuals working in the media center, handling interview requests, coordinating media credentials, and writing press releases on behalf of the tournament.

The PGA also had a presence in the media center. Their role was to handle special requests by the press during the tournament. These included requests by photographers and reporters to be allowed “inside the ropes” and in front of spectators.

The tournament also relies heavily on volunteers to help handle the needs of the media center. There were close to two dozen volunteers on hand to help the media with credential check-in and the distribution of parking and meal passes.

Because the Tour’s top players were in attendance at the tournament, security was of the utmost priority. As a precaution, a Massachusetts State Police K-9 detail scoured the media center each morning and afternoon.

There’s so much information available to the press at a PGA Tour event that you really never have to leave the media center to cover the action. The most interactive of this material is the PGA Tour’s Shotlink statistical software program. This program provides any possible statistical information you would need about any golfer and the strength of the field during a given round. It provides detailed information of each shot made by a golfer, from length of the shot, the distance left to the hole, and approximate position of said shot on the fairway. There was a Shotlink terminal available for approximately every four print reporters stationed in the media center. I really don’t know how reporters survived without it.

If you’re a lover of traditional print information, you weren’t disappointed at the Deutsche Bank. Daily material included a packet of press clippings culled from local newspapers covering the event as well as the previous round’s statistical analysis taken from Shotlink. Each press interview done with a golfer or anyone else associated with the tournament is transcribed verbatim and available minutes after its completion. A tournament program is always available as are ample supplies of the day’s pairings. There’s also a bevy of historical information, covering the PGA Tour season in general and the Deutsche Bank Championship in particular.

Even though the modern day PGA Tour stresses the use of technology, there are still old fashioned elements that stand the test of time. At the front of the second floor press area is the traditional hand written scoreboard, meticulously maintained to display each golfer’s hole-by-hole score as well as a summary page sorting players based on their score of the day. If you’ve ever attended a Tour event you’ve seen a similar scoreboard on the course. The attention to detail by these artisans is amazing. After the second round the board operator in the media center included the image of a pair a scissors indicating the score which represented the cut line for that week’s tournament. Ingenious. Adjacent to the manual scoreboard was an electronic one depicting scores of the tournament leaders.

The media center was equipped with wireless Internet access. The press also had the use of telephones, printers, and fax machines. There were two wide screen televisions in the press room, showing the televised portion of the tournament and other sporting events when the Golf Channel or NBC were off the air.

Speaking of the television coverage, I didn’t see many people from the Golf Channel or NBC make it to the media center. They each received information from their own production facilities located elsewhere on the course.

Forget your notebook? Not to worry. The tournament also provided reporter’s notebooks complete with a course layout, tournament fact sheets, and information on local hotels and restaurants. Kudos to the tournament organizers and the local chambers of commerce for their attention to detail. There were also specially designed sheets available where a reporter could take notes on an individual player’s hole-by-hole performance.

Along with the print press and electronic media, the web also plays a big role at a PGA event. PGA Tour Productions had its own area on press row where reporters and technicians were always busy working on a number of interviews and highlight packages for the Tour’s website. Deutsche Bank also had its share of media professionals on hand working on material for the tournament website.

Food at the tournament also exceeded the norm. Because golf tournaments are a daylong affair, there was a hot breakfast and hot lunch served each day of the tournament. There was also a dedicated bathroom facility for the press located just outside the media center, separate from the portable accommodations available to the general public.

Player interviews were determined by BZA based on the flow of the tournament on a given day. The high profile golfers were interviewed every day. Besides the media center interview room, there was also space available to speak with golfers near the scoring trailers off the 18th and 9th greens. Arrangements were also made for members of the press to talk with golfers who may not be at the top of the leader board but hold significance to their readers or viewers back home.

The press at a PGA Tour event should have no complaints about the resources available to them throughout the course of a tournament.  It’s another example where today’s media really has it made.


Comments

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind





  • SMJ Stuff


    Come visit our store on CafePress!

  • Users