If any of you are following the Accenture Match Play tourney in Tucson, I am a
"Walking Scorer" -- they give me a Motorola-built hand-held called a
"Symbol" and I walk the course with one group each day, scoring the round.
The Symbol is connected wirelessly from the course directly to the PGA
computer system, so everything I enter appears in real-time on scoreboards
nearby and on the TV commentator's computers. Tomorrow is my final day
doing this, but I work elsewhere Saturday morning and have a pass for the
entire tourney as a volunteer.
On Wednesday we started on time and our group got through 7-1/2 holes
before the weather turned too nasty to continue. The course got snowed in
over the next few hours and play was finally cancelled for the day about 3
hours after play was suspended. They told us to report for a planned 8:30
AM tee time, but due to the failure of the snow on the 15th hole (the
highest hole on the course) to melt in a timely fashion, we didn't resume
play until 1 PM. But they didn't know how long it would take, so we just
sat around waiting from 8 until noon doing nothing until they finally got
started.
My group yesterday and today was Jamie Donaldson of Wales vs Thorbjorn
Olesen of Denmark. Donaldson bogeyed 5 of the first 7 holes to go 3 down
when play was suspended. He never recovered, losing 3&2 after bogeying
the 16th. Tomorrow I have match #38, Jason Day (defeated Zack Johnson 6&5)
vs Russell Henley (defeated Charl Schwartzel 1 up), with a planned teetime
of 10:20 AM (subject to frost delays). Jason Day is a Big Name compared
to the two I scored for today, so he'll get much more coverage than my
pair today.
Viewership and interest will be down quite a bit (unfortunately for the
tourney sponsors) due to the one-and-done departures of Tiger Woods (#1
seed in Gary Player bracket) and Rory McIlroy (#1 seed overall). They say
that the last time Charles Howell III played Tiger Woods in a match play
event was in the US Junior Amateur Tourney when CH3 was a senior in high
school.
Using the Symbol I track clubs used for driving on par 4s & 5s (Driver,
Fairway Wood, or Iron), where each subsequent shot is hit from (e.g.
fairway, bunker, rough, "native area" [a.k.a. desert ;-)], etc.),
penalties, drops, provisional balls, and putts (made or conceded). When I
check "On the tee", any large video display near that tee starts updates
to show info about the player who I show is currently hitting. When I
check "Around the green", any large display near that green shows info and
stats about the player I have chosen. It's pretty cool, and the Symbols
(all run by volunteers at every event) are the source of the real-time
stats that make TV golf more interesting.
I also have to keep a backup paper card "just in case" ;-) but that just
has numbers.
Watching how a pro plays the entire course is very interesting, much more
so than just watching all the pros pass through one hole (which I did last
year as a crowd-control marshall on the 8th hole).
Cool (to me) stat of the day: In PGA history, only 6 tournaments have had
delays or scheduling issues due to snow. Four of them have been in
Tucson.
