PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — The 18th grandstand at the Open Championship is recognizable from a distance as a place of consequence. It looms above Royal Portrush in a cloud of navy blue, a great amphitheater of plastic seats, loud stairs and bright-yellow scoreboards enveloping the action within.
But hoisted between a tangle of black wires above the 18th grandstand rests the place of greatest consequence at this year’s Open Championship: a small, remote-operated camera attached to a rotating jib. This is the Open Championship’s newest (and greatest) golf TV innovation: The Spidercam.
On Monday afternoon, the R&A announced the 18th hole at Royal Portrush would be equipped with the Spidercam — a mobile TV camera that promises to alter the way tens of millions of golf fans view the action from the most consequential hole at this year’s final major. The camera will sit suspended above the 18th green at Royal Portrush, attached to a four-point cable system that allows it to rove between various locations to showcase new angles of the undulations and shots into the hole. This is believed to be the first time the technology will be utilized for a golf broadcast anywhere in the world.
American football fans will be familiar with the technology when they see it during NBC’s coverage this week. The Spidercam is synonymous with the NFL’s uber-popular “SkyCam,” which provides a down-the-line and overhead view of the action from NFL games similar to the one utilized by the Madden video game series. Several years ago, the technology saw a surge in popularity after a foggy Super Bowl rematch between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons necessitated the camera’s usage on Sunday Night Football. Fans enjoyed the camera so much that NBC aired an entire Thursday Night Football game utilizing the SkyCam later in the season, and the camera became a regular fixture of NFL broadcasts in the years that followed.
“We have worked closely with European Tour Productions and their production partners IMG to invest in cutting-edge broadcast technology and believe that Spidercam will bring millions of fans a new perspective of the action from Royal Portrush with incredible detail and accessibility wherever they are in the world,” Neil Armit, the R&A’s chief commercial officer, said in a release announcing the news.
On Tuesday morning in Portrush, camera crews working for the production company responsible for the Open TV broadcast, European Tour Productions, could be spotted fiddling with the camera as practice round players cycled through the 18th green. The camera zipped from location to location at impressive speed, providing minimal overhead distraction as it cycled through various camera shots.
The hope, for both the R&A and the Open’s American broadcast partners at NBC, is that the new camera angle will give fans an added dose of perspective about golf’s final major championship. Unlike most of golf’s other major championship hosts, it can be difficult even for experienced camera crews to grasp the full subtlety of links golf courses, which traditionally rely upon making use of a rolling dunescape littered with pot bunkers rather than defined landforms like water, sand and trees.
