“Where there was competition, there was no degradation in audience."

SBJ's John Ourand asks TV execs if the 2.1, all time low final round Open Championship rating was a product of the move to cable and ESPN. No one is alarmed.

“One event with no American in the hunt is not a reliable sample. We can’t take anything from it,” Hancock said. “We’re not alarmed, by any means.”

Hancock’s view was echoed by others. The majority believe that this year’s Open certainly would have flirted with record-low numbers even if ABC had carried it. The tournament was a dud for American audiences. It featured a virtual unknown in Oosthuizen running away with the victory. It added up to an anemic final day rating of 2.1, which is off by a whopping 44 percent from last year, when U.S. golfing legend Tom Watson was in the mix.

But more importantly, audience demo quality was high at the end, at least if you are going for the divorced mid-50s, yacht-owning sector. This from Louis Oosthuizen in John Strege's weekly roundup:

"I got a call from Mr. Greg Norman and he said something that I will remember for the rest of my life. He said I am the first person to get him to watch a full round of golf on television. He watched my first shot (on Sunday) to my last and couldn't leave the couch." -- British Open winner Louis Oosthuizen