Masters App Marvel
I just need to say a few words here about the best app on the planet, the Masters app.
This app only needs to exist for about one week a year—four days,really—and yet it outpaces any other app I use on a regular basis on many fronts.
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Masters app serves the annual Masters Golf Tournament which is the premiere golf tournament in the world. There is countless lore surrounding this tournament. It attracts the best golfers in the world. They play on one of the most challenging courses in the world. And it exists on the grounds of one of the most elite private clubs in the world, Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, USA. Notable members past and present to this club include Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Roger Goodell, Peyton Manning, Jack Nicklaus, Condoleeza Rice, Dwight Eisenhower, Jack Welch, and T. Boone Pickens, Jr. I’m not sure what T. Boone did in his life to gain access to Augusta, but the name just sounds like someone who would be a member of a really exclusive private golf club.
Anyways, even if you don’t like golf, you may appreciate the design and user experience provided by the Masters app. Here’s a rundown…
It’s Free
Despite membership to the club costing somewhere far north of $100,000, and the annual total purse that will be distributed to players being $20 million dollars, the Masters app is totally free to download. And aside from an ad or two that you might watch when you first open the app, the user experience is essentially ad free and seamless from there on out.
The Video
One of the most remarkable aspects of this app is how it magically, seamlessly, effortlessly plays endless video clips with sound. It does this so quickly and with such high quality that you wonder if the app somehow upgraded your phone without you knowing it. There’s no lag. No interruption. It somehow manages to display video better than when I watch my own videos that are saved on my phone. You can instantly tune into the livestream broadcast. You can watch any number of player highlights and interviews and behind the scenes stories. You can search for a video clip of any player on any hole on any day and pull up that exact clip within seconds. Trust me, it somehow showcases video better than any other app you have ever used and I’m not sure how it does it.
The Design
The overall design of the app is clean elegant and uncomplicated. Logos, icons and type are all sized perfectly. Line weight is exactly right. The color scheme is simple and instantly recognizable as The Masters. Photos are gorgeous. The layout is intuitive, easy to navigate, and manages to pull off the rare feat of organizing massive amounts of information in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming.
The Players
If you are one of the rare folks who manage to get an invitation to this tournament, be forewarned because the Masters app manages to know more about you than the IRS and it reveals it for all to see. Click on player’s name from the Leaderboard and you are taken to a single page where you see their portrait, name, representing country, biography, birthplace, residence, education background, tee time, current tournament position, current scorecard, stats, scoring average, lifetime earnings, playing history, social profiles, a slew of recent news links, and even their god damn weight. There’s instantaneous video of them playing live. When viewing their scorecard, you click on any hole and instantly watch video of how they performed on every stroke of the hole. With a click or two, you can literally watch a continuous string of concise video clips of every single stroke that player had in the entire tournament.
The “Track” feature takes all this to another level by mapping and plotting every stroke on every hole. Click on any point and you can view video of that particular moment.
The Course
The actual golf course is like a revered entity all its own where every hole, bridge and creek has a name, every plant has a purpose and and every obstacle has a thousand stories to tell. The app allows you to dig deeper than you could ever imagine into any of this minutiae. Why is Hole No. 14 called “Chinese Fir.” Did you know that “Tea Olive” had a left bunker removed from the fairway in 1935? And which 2014 weather event led to the demise of the loblolly pine known as the Eisenhower Tree? The Masters App knows all.
The Experience
Buried in the app is a ton of other content that you can discover relating to the overall experience. What food is served on the course? What food is served at the players private dinner? What do the accommodations look like for the amateurs? What kind of merch do they sell? What time does the course open to patrons? Can I play Fantasy Masters? What are some great moments from Masters history? Which hole is loudest? What’s up with the Green Jacket? What the hell is a yardage book? How do I get tickets to future events? The app allows you to dive into stories, images and videos of any and all of these things.
