3M Ratings Up 14%, Beating Last Year's WGC FedEx On Similar Weekend

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The lack of a star-studded leaderboard still didn’t hurt CBS and Golf Channel’s numbers too terribly, as the 2020 3M Championship win by Michael Thompson saw a 14% increase over last year’s event captured by Matthew Wolff.

According to CBS, the overall run of “return” events is up 25% over last year. A nice increase even given that 2019 ratings were down.

The 3M’s ratings also highlight just how dismal the numbers were for a strong field at the 2019 WGC FedEx St. Jude, won by Brooks Koepka and which aired on a comparable weekend:

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2020 PGA Marks ESPN's Debut: You'll Want That ESPN+ Subscription Dialed In

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Without having seen CBS’s schedule, little imagination is still not required to tally up and realize ESPN, with CBS, will essentially provide wall-to-wall coverage from Harding Park. That’s a product of the new long-term rights schedule for next week’s PGA Championship. Notice just how much ESPN+ (only available via streaming that milliennials still don’t pay for), is handling coverage, including early in the week and even when CBS is taking over. While the Worldwide Leader will have nice-sized cable broadcast windows all four days, this is still my nice way of reminding hardcore fans to get your affairs in order: namely, your streaming subscriptions.

And while you’re at it, the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle is the better deal. Everyone could use some Mandalorian in their lives.

Ratings: 2020 Memorial Tops "Return To Golf" Events, Golf Wins The Weekend

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A few things stand out with the 2020 Memorial final round ratings: it scored an increase in viewership in July over the normal May dates. Generally fewer people are watching television this time of year.

Also, the final round 2.09 was registered going up against NASCAR. Furthermore, Tiger Woods was only briefly part of the rain-delay interrupted CBS window.

Golf Channel also did well with Tiger in the early weekend coverage provided by the CBS crew that has pulled off the return under complicated working conditions:

According to ShowBuzzDaily.com, golf won the weekend too. While the competition is lighter than it will be in the coming weeks, there were more sports viewing options than a few weeks ago.

Should DeChambeau And Caddie Get Some Time Off For Friday's Conduct Unbecoming Antics?

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During Friday’s Memorial, Bryson DeChambeau made a mess of the 15th hole. While his 10 is not available to be watched on the PGA Tour app (brand protected!), most of the conduct unbecoming was captured nicely here in this roundup by Jay Rigdon at Awful Announcing.

Three elements were particularly troubling, starting with Dechambeau’s patting down of rough before and after taking a drop. While this dreadful practice continues to be commonplace way too often, this is just not a good look:

Then there was his subsequent treatment of the PGA Tour rules staff members who were called out to issue a (correct) ruling. (Golf.com’s Dylan Dethier went through the shots here.)

This is DeChambeau’s conversation with the first official:

While the second conversation with Ken Tackett would never match an Earl Weaver meltdown, DeChambeau’s disrespect and disdain for the official was evident (video on the Rigdon link). Tackett is a pretty stellar official and individual, as profiled here by Karen Crouse.

Then, after teeing off at the 16th, DeChambeau caddie Tim Tucker went out of his way to block a CBS cameraman from recording images of his player as they walked off the tee. (Rigdon has the video here.)

We all get that golf is infuriating and leads people to do strange things. And the pro sport needs drama at times. DeChambeau is a character and brings much-needed intrigue. But there is one huge problem that has come with his body transformation: he’s openly rude on national television to people who are just doing their job. And in the case of reduced television crews who are working long days in hot weather and in a pandemic, players should be thanking them, not encouraging their caddies to approach them in hostile fashion.

The Friday incidents came just two weeks after DeChambeau’s ridiculous berating of a CBS cameraman at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. And remember, he subsequently asserted that his brand was not protected.

Now with a second episode under his belt in only two weeks, Team DeChambeau is not doing the PGA Tour any favors. (His increasingly angry ways have, however, done wonders for those campaigning to roll back distance, so there’s that!)

Fines will not do the trick if a player and caddie so openly feel free to berate or threaten television crews. Time off to think about who pays for the this playing-golf-for-money business might do wonders.

Tiger Then And Now: Memorial First Round Most Watched Since 1997

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Tiger’s back, again! And I believe we know who was responsible for the 1997 ratings too.

For Immediate Release from Golf Channel:

MOST-WATCHED FIRST ROUND AT THE MEMORIAL SINCE 1997                                                            

DUBLIN, Ohio (July 17, 2020) – GOLF Channel’s first round coverage of the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide (2:30-6:30 p.m. ET) saw 1.08 million average viewers, +152% year-over-year. Thursday’s telecast became the most-watched opening round at the Memorial since 1997 (1.18M average viewers, ESPN), and the most-watched weekday PGA TOUR telecast on GOLF Channel since the opening round of the 2018 TOUR Championship (1.25M average viewers).

Additional highlights:

  • Coverage peaked from 5:15-5:30 p.m. (1.25M average viewers).

  • GOLF Channel was the No. 1 cable sports network (2:30-6:30 p.m.) by 355%, and No. 4 of 114 Nielsen-rated cable networks.

  • Thursday evening’s encore telecast (7:30-11:30 p.m.) earned 337k average viewers, becoming the most-watched PGA TOUR replay telecast on GOLF Channel in more than five years (2015 PLAYERS Championship RD2, 364k average viewers).

  • Thursday became GOLF Channel’s most-watched day in 2020, and most-watched Thursday since The 2019 Open.

Tape-Delayed Workday Charity Open Wins The Sports Weekend

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Even with the outcome having been determined, the fill-in Workday Charity Open on CBS edged FS1’s prime time NASCAR to rank as last weekend’s top rated sports broadcast, notes Sports Media Watch.

Showbuzzdaily.com has the full listing here.

The Workday final round from Muirfield Village, won in a playoff by Collin Morikawa over Justin Thomas, competed against NBC’s live airing of the American Century Championship.

Compared to the same weekend in 2019, the Workday easily beat the John Deere Classic while the American Century held steady.

Even Tiger Watched Last Week's Workday Thriller On His Computer

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Tiger Woods returned to Muirfield Village for a practice round with Justin Thomas and spoke to media soon after. The session didn’t reveal much, though the big buried lede came when discussing last week’s Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village when Collin Morikawa and Thomas went to a playoff.

Tiger revealed that he was watching on his computer like most after CBS successfully produced excellent live early round coverage for Golf Channel, then sent viewers to its app and website to watch continuing live coverage all so the final round could be shown on tape in its regularly scheduled time slot.

Q. You've been in this situation before, too, but I'm sure you saw on Sunday J.T. holes a 50-footer. If there's a crowd around like Memorial usually gets and they react to it, how much harder is it for Collin to make his putt?

TIGER WOODS: A lot more difficult. I just think that the energy -- even it felt weird as I was watching on my computer at home, like 14, when Collin hit the ball on the green there, and granted, they've never had the tees up there during the Memorial event, but if they were and had that same situation during a Memorial event, to have someone drive the ball on the green that close to the hole, I mean, that whole hillside would have been going nuts.

Now, I’m speculating here, but work with me: Tiger Woods went to Stanford, he has a big yacht, he loves sports, and watches a lot of those sports on TV in the comfort of his home. I’m thinking he has a pretty nice TV setup, maybe even a “guy” who set up a sweet system complete with surround sound, Sonos through the estate and every channel known to man.

And he went to his computer to watch the live stream because, well, it was just easier.

Yep, streaming still stinks.

Anyway, speaking of going nuts: imagine if Tiger’s in contention for historic win No. 83 this week and storms again force tee times to move up (50% chance for Sunday as of now).

Could this mean a repeat of last week’s complicated and unsatisfying approach to serving viewers?

“Going nuts” is one way to think of how the sports viewing public will behave if it’s deja vu all over again.

CBS Partners With NASCAR Disruptors For Races With "The human being controlling the machine, not the machine controlling the outcome"

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SBJ’s John Ourand explains the new partnership between CBS and SRX, a NASCAR disrupter led by hall of famers Tony Stewart and Ray Evenham.

The parallels with the Premier Golf League are hard to ignore, from claims of wanting star drivers and to not threaten NASCAR (right!). There are also short-track races, tighter prime-time TV windows, tighter sponsor integration, but one huge difference: an effort to return emphasis on driving skill over technology.

Go figure.

From Ourand’s story:

SRX is most excited about the way drivers will compete on those short tracks. Evernham will design, prepare and build traditional stock cars that are capable of running on different surfaces and different types of tracks, such as paved or dirt.

“We want to make that machine be a big part of it, but it’s got to be the driver, crew chief, the human being controlling the machine, not the machine controlling the outcome of the competition,” Evernham said. “That combination of driver, crew chief and machine, no computers telling you what to do, no simulation. It’s really about the competition, how well that driver and crew chief can make that machine go against one another.”

Shack Show Episode 19: Does anybody CARE about the VIEWER?!!

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I don’t want, in any way, to diminish Collin Morikawa’s exciting win in the Workday Charity Open. It’s pretty thrilling for golf to have a young star who has so much upside delivering such consistency and also showing that playing four years in college, the Walker Cup and, in general, the old fashioned way to the pro ranks.

However, it was a bit of a broadcasting placement debacle compounded by the pandemic and opportunity golf has to gain new fans. I was hardly alone in this assessment. (To be clear, CBS’s crews are doing amazing work in the midst of pandemic constraints.)

So, here’s a short Shack Show rant about Sunday’s weirdo tease of early live golf hinting at a fantastic young gun showdown in early Golf Channel coverage, only to be interrupted by beancounters, clashing corporate interests and those ironclad contracts that forget about the viewer.

Morikawa Secures Signature Win At Workday Charity Open

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First off, great job by the PGA Tour staff and forecasters who correctly got the final round finished with an early start to the one-off Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village.

Second, thanks to Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Viktor Hovland for a great show of some young-gun golf. Thomas had a weird day and, well he’s still a PGA Championship winner with twelve PGA Tour titles, huge upside, amazing drive, and undoubtedly many more wins the way he delivers most weeks. He said this one “will hurt” (Steve DiMeglio reports from Dublin, Ohio) but I’m not sure anyone who knows golf views this as anything but a tiny blip in Thomas’ career arc.)

But the win by Morikawa—assuming you could stomach the disastrous live golf handoff to streaming and which I addressed on an emergency Shack Show rant—was impressive. A 23-year-old who has been on the Tour just a year, and only a few weeks removed from a heartbreaking loss, and, most amazingly, a winner at storied and difficult Muirfield Village his first four competitive rounds there, speaks to the SoCal/Cal/Walker Cup star’s absurdly promising career start.

I loved the Golf.com Confidential thoughts on Morikawa’s incredible ballstriking and steadiness:

Dethier: Morikawa hit four or five truly spectacular golf shots from over 200 yards on Sunday. Two near-aces. A kick-in eagle. A driver to 15 feet. He’s an absolute sniper and it was really fun to see him get rewarded, despite almost missing from 18 inches just to get into that playoff.

Sens: You hit it as close as he does over and over, you’re going to be in the mix. A lot. Dead-eye ball-striking aside, he also has a calm about him. At the first event back in Texas, he hit some glitches throughout the week but each time was able to right himself and keep himself in the mix. The putter betrayed him, ultimately. But clearly he’s got something special going on between his ears as well.

Bamberger: Great fundamentals. Cool manner. Seems to have no distractions in his life. He’s about the golf. We’ve seen it before most recently with Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth. He follows in that tradition.

Final round highlights from PGA Tour Entertainment:

In the final round of the 2020 Workday Charity Open, Collin Morikawa defeated Justin Thomas in a three-hole playoff to claim his second-career win on the PGA...

Ratings Rocket Mortgage Classic Final Round Up 56% On CBS

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Another very solid weekend for PGA Tour ratings with not much sports competition due to the pandemic and a late start for NASCAR’s rance, a July 4 weekend that should have substantially cut into numbers, did not.

Bryson DeChameau’s win at the Rocket Mortgage Classic was up 56% from 2019 and if you ignore the silly demographics, earned plenty of eyeballs.

Showbuzz Daily’s full numbers for CBS and Golf Channel telecasts. The weekday broadcasts on Golf Channel were CBS-produced, while the weekend lead-in coverage was produced by PGA Tour Live.

Buck Reflects On Fox's U.S. Open Run, What Kills Him Not To Have Called

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Fox Sports’ Joe Buck penned an uplifting serenade to five years of Fox handling USGA events and namely, the U.S. Open.

While he has fond memories of everything coming together for both parties at Pebble Beach, including a fitting Tap Room finish, only one thing really bugs the broadcaster. Not getting to call a Tiger win, or at least, contending U.S. Open week.

Regarding Tiger: We never got to see THE MAN do his thing. (MC, DNP, DNP, MC, T21 in our five years.) And that kills me.

Buck also offers this about golf on TV.

But I wouldn’t trade our five-year run for anything, because of the people I worked with (starting with our producer, Mark Loomis), what we experienced together, what we learned. Here are some quick lessons: Let the players and caddies talk. Less is more. From the field is better than from the booth. And the Fox Sports production-side innovations will become a big part of TV coverage elsewhere. Drone shots and more ball-tracers already are.

While Fox promised a lot and severely under-delivered for the USGA, they did end up bringing the disruptor role that was promised by pushing others into more usage of tracer, drone and maybe someday, more mic’s in the cup to hear conversations on greens.

I would add their hole graphics, which were the most artistically beautiful and useful when they worked, and their placement of cameras to better give viewers a sense of what the player faced along with the scale and details of tee shots. (The Golf.com gang touched on this and more in this week’s Confidential, point 5).

Buck also deserves credit for adjusting his style and stepping up immediately in big situations when he did not let controversy stop him from calling it as he saw it.

Global Golf Post: The USGA Was Not Expecting Fox-NBC Rights Trade

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Global Golf Post’s Ron Green looks at the still-stunning USGA media rights reversion to NBC after Fox decided to eat a sizeable portion of the bloated price they paid in 2013.

He noted this on the timing, suggesting it was strictly a deal between the networks.

The first conversations took place during the spring but gained momentum in the past two weeks.

According to multiple sources, as discussions about NBC taking the 2020 broadcast evolved and NBC Universal showed willingness to assume the deal, Fox Sports executives Eric Shanks and Larry Jones brought the idea of transferring the rights to USGA chief executive officer Mike Davis earlier this month. Davis was apparently unaware of the impending change until the time of that presentation.

Executives within the Fox Sports golf team were not made aware of the potential change until last Thursday. The rest of the crew, including announcers Joe Buck, Curtis Strange, Paul Azinger, Brad Faxon and others, were not informed until Sunday afternoon.

Retired PGA Tour Pro And Golf Personality Charlie Rymer Shares Details Of His COVID-19 Fight

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I’ve never been prouder to call Charlie Rymer a friend and ambassador of the sport.

The former U.S. Junior Amateur champion, PGA Tour pro, golf commentator and mayor emeritus of Myrtle Beach Tweeted about his brush with death as caused by COVID-19. The courage and heart to both battle back and share his story is something to behold. And a huge thank you to all who cared for him, especially wife Carol who was already destined for sainthood pre-pandemic (RN).

Charlie’s story:

The Shack Show Episode 17, Talking Fox, NBC & USGA With Guest Ron Sirak

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Ron Sirak spent 18 years with the Associated Press and 18 more with Golf Digest/Golf World, he’s an author and Golf Channel contributor while still a reporter on the LPGA beat.

While we do also discuss the upcoming LPGA return in late July, the majority of our discussion surrounds Sirak’s definitive story for Golf Digest on the Fox-USGA media contract. With the deal having collapsed and NBC/Golf Channel/Peacock taking on the remaining seven years of a contract they once held, it was the perfect time to catch up with the 2015 PGA Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient in Journalism about his story, the fallout from the latest turn and playing golf in a pandemic.

Here is the Apple podcast show page and of course, you can always subscribe at your favorite app or listen below via iHeart: