Golf is often given the bad rap of being a traditional “old boys” sport so I am not surprised by that the fact the big story today is that Jason Gore was given a sponsors exemption because of Twitter — Golf fans are not so old school after all. No surprise to a fan like me!

If you don’t know the score…back on January 6, Jason Gore sent out a tweet that he was signing up for the Northern Trust Open (Feb 14 to 19) qualifying event and tweeted he’d be “stoked” to get a sponsor’s invitation.  His fans delivered with a twitter campaign that filled the Northern Trust Twitter page with support for Gore.  Just 6 days later, Northern Trust sent out a tweet that Jason Gore is awarded an exemption.

Why I am writing about it? Because my profession is online marketing and it was fun to see how all this played out.  By the way, it didn’t hurt to have media outlets like the Golf Channel commentators talking about the twitter campaign on TV over the last few days (before Northern Golf make a decision) and giving it even more exposure.  Northern Trust got it right — They listened to the golf fans and gave them what they wanted — an exemption for Gore.  Now, Northern Trust also got what every company loves — lots of free press! And, it’s good press.

But the most important outcome is that a guy who is ranked 643 in the world and did not qualify for the PGA Tour this year got his wish thanks to his fans and twitter.