Forty Yards Away or Four Feet Away?

Sometimes the best way to improve the spectator experience at a professional golf tournament is to have fewer spectators.

That thought occurred to me while standing only a few feet from Patrick Reed at the Nexo Championship in Scotland.

There were no grandstands separating us. No crowd three or four people deep. No need to hold a phone over someone's head to see what was happening.

Reed stood beside his caddie, studied his yardage book, discussed the upcoming shot and prepared to play.

And we were standing right there.

A few months earlier, Laurie and I had attended the Valero Texas Open, a PGA Tour event in San Antonio. We enjoyed the tournament and watched some excellent golf.

But the experience couldn't have been more different.

At Valero, getting within 40 yards of a player could be difficult.

At Nexo, sometimes we were four feet away.

The Valero Texas Open: A Smaller PGA Tour Event

The Valero Texas Open offered pretty much what I've come to expect from attending a PGA Tour tournament in the United States.

There were large galleries following the better-known players. Around tees and greens, spectators were often two or three people deep.

If you wanted a prime viewing spot, you had to anticipate where a group was going and get there before the players arrived.

We found a good location near a par 3 and watched several excellent shots. But following players around the course and consistently getting close enough to really study what they were doing was difficult.

There was, of course, one exception.

A wayward golf shot.

If a player missed the fairway and his ball happened to land near where you were standing, suddenly you had the best seat in the house.

Otherwise, there was usually a substantial buffer between the players and us.

That's not necessarily a criticism. It's simply the reality of watching a popular PGA Tour event with thousands of other golf fans who want to see exactly the same thing you do.

And the Valero Texas Open provided plenty of other attractions.

The merchandise tent alone was more than 1,000 square feet, filled with shirts, hats and merchandise from multiple vendors carrying tournament and course logos. There were numerous food and beverage options, hospitality areas and all the infrastructure you would expect from a major PGA Tour stop.

It felt like a big sporting event.

Because it was.

Then We Went to the Nexo Championship

Fast-forward a few months and several thousand miles.

We arrived at Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire for the Nexo Championship on the DP World Tour.

The caliber of golf hadn't changed.

The spectator experience certainly had.

We watched Patrick Reed, Matthieu Pavon and several other outstanding professional golfers—and instead of watching them through a crowd, we often stood right beside them.

That changed everything.

We could hear players talking with their caddies.

We could watch them check their yardages.

We could see how they examined the lie and discussed the wind.

And when they finally settled over the ball, we could watch the swing from just a few feet away.

For a golfer, that's fascinating.

You're not simply watching where the ball goes. You're watching how the shot is created.

Hearing What Television Can't Show You

Watching professional golf on television probably gives you the best overall view of a tournament. You see more players, more shots and more holes than you possibly could walking the course.

But television can't completely reproduce what happens when you're standing five feet from a world-class golfer.

You hear the conversation between player and caddie.

You hear the strike.

You see the trajectory immediately after the ball leaves the clubface.

And you begin to appreciate the subtle differences between the shots they play and the shots most of us would attempt.

That's particularly interesting on a Scottish links course.

We watched players control trajectory, use the wind and work the contours of the ground. Several shots were spectacular.

And because we were standing so close, we could appreciate exactly how they did it.

At Valero, we saw the result.

At Nexo, we could often see the process.

That's a significant difference.

Two Very Different Spectator Villages

The contrast continued away from the golf course.

At Valero, the enormous merchandise tent was an attraction in itself. There were multiple vendors and seemingly endless choices of tournament-logoed and course-logoed merchandise.

Forty Yards or Four Feet?

Our two experiences might best be summarized by distance.

At the Valero Texas Open, getting within 40 yards of a player could sometimes be difficult.

At the Nexo Championship, we stood four or five feet from Patrick Reed while he prepared for a shot.

One tournament gave us considerably more merchandise to buy.

The other let us hear a player and his caddie decide which club to hit.

I'll take the conversation.

There is something exciting about the crowds and energy surrounding a PGA Tour event, and I'll certainly attend more of them.

But our day at the Nexo Championship showed me another way to watch professional golf.

Smaller crowds. Smaller merchandise tent. Fewer food choices. Less spectacle.

And somehow, much more access.

Maybe that's the irony.

The Nexo Championship offered us less of almost everything surrounding professional golf.

And that allowed us to see much more of the golf itself.