Yesterday saw the by then expected win for Team Europe as they took their 10-6 overnight lead from Saturday and turned it into a 16 1/2 – 11 1/2 win.

Over the course of the week, the buzz was building for the Gleneagles based tournament as the best players from the US and Europe went head-to-head.

But there were also big things happening away from the main play, as organisers looked to make it the most digital golf event ever.  With 3 main Twitter accounts being the ones to follow, with @rydercup, @rydercupEUROPE and @rydercupUSA. The event is also great in the fact that so many of players are very active on social media, especially Twitter. Giving fans great insights into what goes on behind the scenes.

Overall there were some 771,000 mentions of the event on (mainly) Twitter. The obvious peak was on Sunday when Europe gained the necessary point to reach the magical 14 1/2 required to win. The day ended with over 341,000 mentions.

(stats via Brandwatch)

And there were more mentions of the @rydercupEUROPE account than there were of the @rydercup main account. The performance of Team USA was reflected in the activity on the @rydercupUSA account which saw very few mentions and hardly any growth in followers over the course of the tournament.

The players were also in good sprits during the weekend with many pictures and updates being given. Though even serial tweeter @IanJamesPoulter took a break between the opening ceremony and the closing celebrations. His first one when he had his phone back yesterday wasn’t a bad one.

Any good.? pic.twitter.com/qtfmruGhsj

— Ian Poulter (@IanJamesPoulter) September 28, 2014

The US players including Bubba Watson and their captain Tom Watson have been noticeable by their lack of any updates since play started on Friday. Keeping their heads down for a few days perhaps.

There were many ways in which Twitter came into its own during the weekend as the platform was utilised by all the major broadcasters, sponsors, players and organisers. In the lead up, Twitter put together a great article showcasing some of the great tweets being put out there and also ways in which to follow/join in with the festivities. Well worth a read.

The official accounts also saw the expected rise on followers you’d expect. In the last week the numbers have been growing;

@RyderCup: 79,643 (Tuesday 22nd) —>  118,899 (Monday 29th)

@RyderCupUSA: 61,599 (Tues 23rd) —> 68,145 (Monday 29th)

(@RyderCupEUROPE stats not available on TwitterCounter for unknown reason)

Not only was their action on Twitter, but the newly launched Ryder Cup YouTube was also playing a key role in getting highlights out to fans. There were behind-the-scenes views of many areas of the event, action from the play – including the winning shot from Wales’ Jamie Donaldson. Over 100 videos were recorded and uploaded over a 3 week period which were seen almost half a million times. Their subscriber level is now over 3,000 – a good base to build upon for future tournaments.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/IS6x5L7TqOY?list=UUFiswEI_awoQBRQ1JK6v0cA[/youtube]

Facebook was a less prevalent platform, from a public point of view at least. Both teams were active on it and Europe once again had the upper hand. With over 211,000 fans on their page there were plenty of great pictures and graphics being used for fans to get their info from and also share with friends.

Team USA were also active, but only up to a point. The last update was from when Hunter Mahan and Justin Rose halved their match to take the score to 13.5 – 9.5. Since then there has been nothing but silence.

The Ryder Cup hosts, the European Tour, also put a lot of hard work into entertaining and informing fans around the course. They invested majorly in wifi on the course (as we wrote about here last week) and at one point had 17,000 concurrent users of the public wifi on Saturday. Possibly a record for a sports event?

Fans were able to watch video, get the latest scores and a GPS navigator app was also developed for on course-only to help spectators route their way to a particular point on the course or the their favourite player in real-time based on their location.

If you were behind the European team you probably enjoyed ever minute of the coverage and are feeling good today. If you’re reading this from the US, then probably not so much.

What did you think of the digital initiatives that were put together? and how did you follow the event?