PGATour.Com's New Look: Just A Pretty Picture?

In preparation for the 2008 tour season, the US PGA Tour unveiled its annual, new look to pgatour.com, the tour’s website. The born-again appearance can be divided vertically into six rough layers, and I’ll take a look at each one here.

At the top, gone is the background sliver of what looks like some cracker, Jim Furyk, Frank Lickliter Junior and Adam Scott (nice diversity there..how about africans, asians, and europeans of non-white appearance.) Replacing it is simple blue and white, the clouds and the skies, all that is good. This top slice serves as the navigational layer of the home page…access to the PGA, Nationwide, and Champions tours is found here, along with wordlinks to six background elements (travel, mobile, instruction, shop and PGA.Com [the club pro site]) and nine dynamic (Live Scoring, Schedule, Players, Video, News, Stats, Fantasy, FedEx Cup, The Players) spaces. Final points are a login in to pgatour.com and a search field.

Level two is the most changed from 2007. Instead of a three-column approach, the entire left column is gone. The focal still image has been enhanced to 2/3 of the page, and serves as the visual/verbal portal to the principal stories of the day. Tucked within is the old square dedicated to the access point to week’s event. The right 1/3 hosts the tease for Fantasy Golf games and the video component. The latter is wider and taller than last year’s version, and appears to a bit less cluttered. They’re really pimping the fantasy, as another tease appears beneath the video screen.

The third shelf is devoted to the bottom of the video panel on the right, and to an enormous leaderboard feature within the left 2/3. A picture of the leader and a color-separated leaderboard make for easy access and viewing. Also present are instantaneous jumps to Champs and Nationwide results.

The fourth step reverts to the three-column approach, with News, Other Tour News, and PGA of America from left to right. It seems that the visibility of the club pros is much higher, hinting at an enhanced financial relationship between Tour and PGA.

The fifth rung follows the tri-part approach with links to (from left to right) PGA Tour initiatives, Season On The Brink (an inside, televised look at Q-School) and the photo gallery.

The final plateau hosts all the corporate links connected to the PGA Tour that your mind can handle. Overall, is it a better portal in 2008? My early answer is yes. In honor of the late B.C. Open, En-Joie!

**By the way, if you wish to look at the evolution of the PGA Tour website, visit this link and type in www.pgatour.com in the “The Wayback Machine” field near the top.