Ryder Cup misses the cut

Golf is an individual sport, but every two years the golfers from the USA and Europe compete in the most fiercely contested team golf match, The Ryder Cup. This event is avidly followed by patriotic golf fans across two continents, who are intrigued to see how the world’s top golfers/personalities perform in the unfamiliar team environment. In the most recent contest, it was just Team Europe that failed to meet expectations.

As you’d expect, the official 2008 Ryder Cup website received a high amount of traffic, but how did it stand up to scrutiny as the online face of one of golf’s most hyped events?

Disappointingly, the website followed a similar format to the 2006 website with only a few enhancements made. On entering the website users were guided to select their team (Team Europe or Team USA) and were then navigated to a tailored team home page. This page featured the team’s top stories and headlines and provided clear links to information about the event, the team and its history. The website used drop-down menus in its primary navigation to allow users to quickly understand the content within each section.

The information was displayed in a simple, but not overly engaging manner, with large amounts of small grey copy and only a few accompanying images. One of the most promising features was the Hole Flyover Videos, with links provided to two Windows Media files of different quality (small, 56K and large, 300k). Unfortunately, this feature ultimately failed to impress because of a number of reasons:

• It was suggested that the videos were accompanied by an audio hole description. However when played, this failed to materialise and the user was left to listen to annoying elevator-style music.
• The poor quality of the smaller file meant that it was hardly worth watching and should therefore not be provided as an alternative.
• These videos were only accessible to those users with Windows Media Player installed on their computers.

Despite the website providing articles on the latest news stories and headlines, there was no ability to add user generated content, such as comments, messages or photos. This seemed like a missed opportunity, as users were likely to be keen to debate contentious issues, such as the selection of Ian Poulter at the expense of the experienced Ryder Cup veteran Darren Clarke. Indeed, the recent online coverage of the Beijing Olympics, with the live streaming of video content and interactive forums and blogs, raised the bar considerably in terms of users’ expectations.

The website did have ‘Travel’ and ‘Store’ links which when selected launched further ‘official’ Ryder Cup websites (Ryder Cup Travel Services and Ryder Cup Online Store). These websites had a completely different look and feel and contributed to a somewhat disjointed experience. The Ryder Cup Travel Service website in particular only provided limited information, with links to a PDF Travel Services Guide and accompanying booking form.

In 2010 it will be Wales’s turn to host the event so let’s hope that in the next year or so the website will undergo a redevelopment stage in order to ensure that it meets the expectations of the increasingly demanding digital sports fan.