Stephanie Wie Gets Credentials Revoked For Modernizing Golf

In the strangest news of the week, blogger and media personality Stephanie Wei, operator of Wei Under Par, got her media credentials from the PGA Tour removed for using the mobile app Periscope during a Monday practice round. Periscope, for those of you unaware, is an app that allows a user to live stream directly from their phone. Anyone who downloads Periscope can watch video taken from another Periscope user's cell phone. Essentially, it allows users to see the world through the eyes of other users. By activating the app, Wei was allowing users to see on the course coverage of the Monday practice round.

Allow me to say, off the top, that if this were to happen during an official round of a tournament, then media credentials should absolutely be taken away. Television companies and sponsors pay a lot of money for coverage of a golf tournament, and one member of the media allowing viewers to bypass that coverage would be incredibly detrimental to the Tour. It would give those particular media members all the power, and would cut into the profits of the Tour. It's similar to the issues internet live streaming causes for television programs.

This is not the issue at hand, however. Wei was using the app during a practice round, which are not televised. The only way for someone to watch a practice round would be to purchase a ticket and watch it in person. That's great for a couple thousand people in the area, but for someone like me, who lives in Northeast Pennsylvania, it would be pretty difficult to attend a practice round in San Francisco, California.

Stephanie Wei didn't do anything to the detriment of the Tour. If anything, she unlocked a new way to open golf up to a large mass of individuals who do not normally watch, and to be able to view events and watch parts of the tournament that are normally invisible to the general audience.

This speaks to an underlining issue within the PGA Tour and the world of golf in general, and that is the inability of anyone to modernize and to reach out to a younger audience. Tour executives only know what they are used to - TV ratings and contracts. It's this same "blinders on" mentality that lead to no one being able to watch the dramatic finish of the RBC Heritage, as the final round was moved up to avoid incoming weather and the TV coverage was already set for 3 PM, long after the tournament ended. If the PGA Tour would have allowed itself some room in their contract, or if they embraced the new internet age, people would have been able to actually witness Jim Furyk winning his first tournament in five years, instead of having to watch it live blogged over Twitter.

The problem with the PGA Tour and the other Tours and agencies within golf is simple - they lack young leadership to keep them in the know about current trends. If you're constantly trying to play catch up with the rest of the world, the world will eventually leave you behind. Removing Wei's credentials sends a really bad signal that the PGA Tour is tone deaf.