We talked last week - actually, thanks to Bill Jempty, were one of the first - about Carolyn Bivens' quote in a Bloomberg piece in which she suggest that she would encourage players to use Twitter during the round to interact with fans.

The reaction to it has been quite mixed.  The players themselves, at least the ones that are on Twitter, seem pretty amped about it.  They're looking forward to interacting with fans while on the course.  The players seem to be of the mind that it can only help the Tour if they're able to interact with fans directly.

Some of the reaction to our post about it, on Twitter, and in other places has not been positive.  Folks on here wondered if it would make play slower, violate the rules of golf, or is just a desperate ploy.

A couple of reactions that I saw and heard over the weekend seemed to create a clear delineation of opinion.

First, I was on the Chicagoland Golf Show with Phil Kosin on Saturday morning on 670 The Score in Chicago.  We talked about a host of subjects, but the first was LPGA and Twitter.  Phil wondered if I found it kind of ridiculous that the LPGA would try such a thing.

Then, I read Dave Seanor over at the Examiner this morning to see his take on the topic.  He was also not very keen on the idea.

"For Morgan Pressel and Christina Kim’s following – her fans are 12-, 13-, 14-year-old girls and boys – they’re not waiting for the golf broadcast on Saturday and Sunday," Bivens told Bloomberg. "They want to know what’s going on in the middle of the round. If we’re going to get out of the collared shirts and khaki pants and make golf chic, hip, happening, Christina Kim is exactly the kind of player to reach out and make golf a lot more relevant."

Make golf more relevant?

Relevant to what?

It’s a sport, Carolyn. People watch to see who wins. If players don’t mind Tweeting during a round, even if it were permissible under the Rules, then they must not want to win badly enough.

And that would be a death knell for the LPGA.

Actually, "not keen" doesn't even describe Dave's opinion accurately.

Both Dave and Phil are longtime veterans of golf.  They're reporters and industry specialists.  I respect their opinions highly, but in this case, we differ.

We're in a different age of sports marketing.  Even as much as five or ten years ago, the worth of a sports league or franchise was measured - other than money - by newspaper ink, network coverage, and coverage in a convergent media.  To some degree, that is still true today.  But, with the proliferation of social media, blogs, internet video, cable TV, and the like, there are an infinite number more ways to export a sports product and provide meaningful value to your brand.

You may or may not know this, but Court works at 790 The Zone in Atlanta on the On the Green show hosted by Brian Katrek.  They discussed this topic over the weekend during their show.  Check out the audio on the player or download the MP3 here!

ESPN is the master of this kind of nuveaux marketing.  They buy up rights to sports properties and synidcate it on TV, radio, ESPN360, espn.com, and anywhere you see those four letters.  It's constantly on SportsCenter - which is essentially just a promotion show for them now.  (Watch ESPNEWS for real highlights.)  They can talk about this stuff so much that they get a ton of mileage out of it.  And the sports leagues can't seem to get enough of it.

Dave is right.  Sports are about athleticism.  But sports marketers only see the athleticism as part of the whole "brand."  And they have enough market data to prove themselves right.  That's why there are golfers Twittering.  It's why Stewart Cink has 261,099 followers right now.  People are accessing their news and information in places that are much more distant from the action itself than ever.  They have the capacity to access live video and leaderboard updates in the subway. 

In other words, I don't have to have a newspaper or TV to follow golf anymore.  I can watch the Masters on my phone in the subway.  I could tell you who is winning the Colonial event in the middle of nowhere.  While that is really cool, it also makes golf and golfers a more passive and distant concept.  The idea - I think - behind this social media business is that it is the balancing act of making sport so accessible.  If you can view a sport from anywhere, then you may as well be able to hear from the players from anywhere.  That can now be achieved without newspapers or TV, or me for that matter.

And, to the dismay of many, it seems to work.  In a time when the LPGA Tour has a great product, but a terrible economy and shaky sponsors, they have to throw the kitchen sink at problems.  This is a part of that and it's a gamble worth taking.  It costs nothing and could turn out to help bring sponsors and fans to golf that might otherwise never notice.  It's playing with house money - they can't lose.