United Kingdom
The Open Championship
Event support, application
management and scoring platform
The Open at
Carnoustie Golf Links
Do the right thing.
Every time.
No exception.
From the 14 courses that have hosted The Open throughout the years, the host venue of the 147th Open in 2018 was Carnoustie Golf Links.
With it’s thick rough and devilish bunkers, Carnoustie is known as one of the world’s most challenging link courses.
Anticipating
the improbable
Simulating future scenarios antd getting ahead of potential problems is vital during an event. Future scenarios are identified and thoroughly analyzed.
Quick response to
difficult issues
During the event, we created a war room where people worked between 10 to 16 hours a day checking, anticipating and thinking ahead of any imaginable situation that could appear, in order to prevent and be ready to deal with any major issues.
Two Tee Times challenge
The Open Championship is using a traditional one-tee start, all players starting off from the first hole. That wasn’t the case during the 2018 Open Championship Practice Days. On Sunday, first day of practice, we were notified that for the next practice days a two- tee start will be used.
This only occurred once, in 2014 on Saturday (2nd round) but never during Practice Days. The existing Tee Times page was not able to adjust to displaying two separate groups starting from a different hole (1st and 10th hole) at the same time.
Playoff challenge
The surprise of the tournament came with a great deal of both excitement and tension for everybody. We had an amazing final day, with seven players, neck and neck, heading towards the playoff. Simulations of a seven–man playoff were made, identifying a potential edge case using the "tenth man rule".
Although it has never happened in the 147-year history of the The Open, the scenario was nevertheless tackled by the development team.
The strategy
We evaluated the current status and performed simulations to assess the chances of implementing and perfecting the functionality to make this possible. Once the potential scenario was identified the team sprang into action.
We presented the simulation results to the client and reached out to our data suppliers (SportsMEDIA Technology), to ensure the correct interpretation of the transmitted data. Achieving this required some development in the back-end system, such as database structure. We also had to update the API which connects our back-end system to the front-end, in order to display the new data.
After a few hours of peer programming, automated functionality, performance tests and a seamless live deploy, the potential issue was corrected. Needless to say, the team’s work, coordination and implication made everything possible.
The outcome
The improvements we did to the Playoff never got a chance to be seen by the 4 million users that were following the final day of The Open, however, we were proud to finish a great event that we will always be a part of.
A real success
It was the eighth Open Championship to be played at Carnoustie, with a new record of spectators during the event and many users on the website, watching Italy's first winner of the Claret Jug, Francesco Molinari.
200,000
Average visitors per day in Practice days
1,500,000
Average visitors per day in Championship days
5,705,668
Total visitors during the entire event
Kevin Bain
R&A, Head of Digital Development
Entrusting the technical integrity of TheOpen.com isn’t a decision taken lightly. The website sees a significant increase in traffic during the week of The Open and this offers its own unique set of challenges.
The R&A required an agency that could ensure the business-critical infrastructure is managed flawlessly as well as one that can offer a scalable service offer to manage our needs.
TEC is an extension of the R&A's team and work seamlessly to deliver a scalable, robust and reliable service when it's needed most.