Each spring, golf followers get excited for 2 issues: to observe the world’s greatest golfers tee off on the all-important Augusta Nationwide Masters event, and to obtain the companion app.
We’re severe. For some purpose (in all probability regarding how a lot cash the notoriously secretive Augusta golf membership has), the free companion app for the Masters event is unimaginable. When the Masters roll round, individuals publish odes to it on Reddit, giving the app shout-outs purely to point out their appreciation.
“Only a reminder that the Masters App is a uncommon beast that’s truly good, properly designed and works fantastically properly,” a Thursday publish in r/Golf reads. The event started Thursday and runs by the weekend.
To be clear, this is not a PGA app, or an ESPN or Golf Channel app. Nope. It is an app that is solely objective is to assist individuals watch one golf event one weekend a yr.
Is The Masters app free?
So what makes the app so nice?
To start with, it is one hundred pc free. There isn’t any cable login or subscription service required. That is an absolute rarity in a streaming ecosystem through which broadcasters’ primary purpose is getting individuals to pay for content material. You possibly can obtain the Masters app within the Apple App Retailer for iPhones or Google Play retailer for Android telephones.
However content-wise, frankly, it simply has all the pieces that somebody who desires to observe a heck of plenty of high-level golf would need. A leaderboard with up-to-the-minute scoring? Test. A livestream of the printed that is not buggy? Naturally. A modern information tab, a schedule, a map of the course, spotlight movies, a birds-eye-view exhibiting the placement of each participant? However in fact.
Tips on how to watch sports activities reside with out cable (or perhaps a TV)
However the characteristic that actually pushes this child over the sting is its “Each Participant, Each Shot, Each Gap” characteristic. The Masters has taken it upon itself to movie and broadcast, um, each shot of each participant at every gap.
Who would want to see this a lot golf, you ask? Golf followers. What on earth do you do with this a lot video? Effectively, in 2020, the app rolled out a characteristic referred to as My Group that permits you to make your personal lil’ customized group to keep watch over any participant you need to. There is a tab the place you’ll be able to maintain observe of their scores, and a feed that exhibits their photographs.
So, for instance, if I used to be to make my very own group of golf cuties, I’d select Colin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth, and Viktor Hovland. Then, due to the app, I might get to simply watch my favourite boiz being cute and good at golf collectively whereas attending to ignore the borings that could be featured in the primary reside broadcast.
Or, as one Reddit person put it, “Better of all, each participant each shot protection implies that I will not be pressured into watching Patrick Reed.”
Give all of them the inexperienced jacket.
Credit score: Screenshot: The Masters
As soon as my boiz take the inexperienced, the feeds of their photographs will present up within the “My Group” tab.
Credit score: Screenshot: The Masters
The illuminati on the Augusta Nation Membership did not give you this app on their very own, clearly. The membership companions with IBM to make the app. They upped their AI sport with the “Each Shot” characteristic in 2020 so individuals may extra successfully watch remotely through the pandemic yr. The app depends on IBM’s Watson AI to handle all that participant knowledge and video, to routinely floor highlights, observe photographs, and extra.
The app will get enjoyable new toys yearly, too. In line with the app’s model historical past, what’s new within the 2022 Grasp’s App is enhancements to the fantasy integration, and extra content material round “Featured Teams+.” This can be a portal that exhibits featured teams of gamers that now shows reside video plus “bonus trivia, polls, predictions, breaking information, and extra.”
If it appears like plenty of time, cash, effort, and know-how has gone into making an app that individuals use yearly for the aim of watching a sporting occasion, right! However when watching sports activities may be so buggy and fragmented due to streaming providers, typically you simply have to offer a shoutout when an app works actually, rather well.
Here is you, child.
