A golf social media arms race? The PGA Tour and USGA are snatching ideas

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then Augusta National must have woken up on Thursday morning feeling quite chuffed.

Six years after the Masters partnered with IBM to launch “A Round in Three Minutes” — a first of its kind technology splicing together every shot from a given player’s round at Augusta National in 180 seconds — the PGA Tour stole the idea right back.

On Thursday, the Tour launched “Rapid Rounds,” a new (well, new to the Tour) short-form content concept for the Tour that aims to show every single shot from a given tournament round in a few minutes or less. Starting at this week’s 3M Open and continuing through the FedEx Cup Playoffs, the Tour will select rapid-fire versions of certain player rounds to be shared via ESPN, NBC, CBS and Tour platforms.

In theory, the new platform gives fans a brand new way to witness the action from on-site at PGA Tour events, another small tweak to Tour broadcasts that originated with the Tour’s “Fan Forward” survey — and was accelerated by tech enhancements from Tour broadcast partners leading to an increase in cameras and streams covering the action.

“With more cameras and streams covering PGA Tour tournaments than ever before, ‘Rapid Rounds’ will offer an additional way for fans to watch each drive, approach and putt from select players showcased across all our media platforms,” Norb Gambuzza, the Tour’s EVP of media said in a release. “’Rapid Rounds’ offers a fast, easy way for fans to engage with their favorite stars and get excited for the next day’s live coverage.”

But the PGA Tour wasn’t the only governing body trying on some new clothes. On Thursday morning, just hours before the Tour’s platforms experimented with Rapid Rounds for the first time, the USGA experimented with a new social video of its own, showcasing footage of the final three holes at a thrilling U.S. Junior Amateur Round of 64 Match in a video on its social feeds.

While the video itself wasn’t all that far off from the USGA’s traditional highlight footage, its editing structure closely resembled that of several high-profile golf YouTube brands, like Good Good Golf. The style, which was first popularized around the time Augusta National experimented with the 3-minute concept in 2019, provides an easy-to-watch, made-for-social media format that has brought amateur golfers (and amateur shot tracer artists) to millions of golf fans in the years since.

For the Junior Amateur, which does not have a broadcast window like the U.S. or U.S. Women’s Open (or television audiences to boot), the format gives fans an opportunity to access the tournament’s thrilling final moments on their social media timelines in a way they’re already used to watching golf on their timelines.

The biggest common thread in both of these social media experiments is ease of access. If there is one area in which (some) establishment golf has been slow to advance over the last half-decade, it’s in understanding the success that short-form content creators like Good Good have found with golf audiences. As it turns out, casual golf fans want to receive golf content, but they’re much better at watching it when that content reaches them in a passive way. Innovations like “Rapid Rounds” and USGA tracer videos test whether real tournament golf can appeal to audiences when those audiences aren’t being asked to watch hours of slow-moving action live on TV. I suspect the USGA and PGA Tour will find what the Masters and Good Good already have: The answer is an emphatic yes.

Good artists copy, and great artists steal.

But as the golf calendar reaches the dog days of summer, something tells us the USGA and PGA Tour would be happy with either designation.