When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
I really wanted to dive into the 2021 U.S. Amateur and still will, but Sunday’s musical channels comes on top of other madness in the name of synergy. Golf is getting hosed.
Before we get to the Olympic ratings news supplied by NBC/Golf Channel, just a reminder that this Thursday’s early morning Golf Channel viewing options cover a vast array of ailments starting at midnight PT/3 am ET: Squat into the best of you! is followed by 5 Makeup Tips 4 You before giving way to the last hour, one-two punch of greatest Must See TV since Cheers and Night Court: Stop Brain Fog and Arthritis + Neck Pain.
If nothing else, this should help a few Villages early-risers fall back to sleep. This middle of the night lineup airs just a bit later than the block last week showing third round women’s Tokyo Olympic golf and the week before that, men’s second round play.
Guess what?
Ratings were up big! But the men’s Olympic golf was down about 8 million American viewers compared to 2016’s final round picked up by NBC. So there’s that.
From Golf Channel PR:
Coverage of the down-to-the-wire final round of men’s golf on Saturday, July 31 delivered the best late night viewership in GOLF Channel history (878,000 viewers, Midnight-3:30 am ET), and ranked second among all networks in that time period (behind only NBC’s “Prime Plus” Olympics show).
Where, incidentally, the golf was not deemed good enough to show on NBC Prime Plus.
Last time, NBC gave around 90 minutes to the final round and had 8.8 million average viewers plus huge (very specific) streaming numbers.
Primetime coverage of the men’s golf competition averaged 565,000 viewers – marking GOLF Channel’s best four-day primetime stretch since December 2019 (President’s Cup).
Also worth noting: early 2016 coverage from Rio on Golf Channel drew a 1.22 rating and an average of 1.845 million viewers.
On the women’s side the numbers were pretty awful in Rio and so anything was bound to be better.
Coverage of the women’s golf competition averaged 345,000 viewers – a 26% increase over the same event in Rio in 2016. The final round on Friday, August 6 (595,000 viewers) increased 39% from comparable Rio coverage.
Last Friday’s final round of the women’s competition was GOLF Channel’s most-watched women’s golf telecast since August 2017 (Solheim Cup final round).
NBC did show a nice chunk of the women’s third round late Friday/early Saturday but did not show any of the exciting final round.
Xander Schauffele captured Olympic gold with a clutch, final hole par putt. The American and San Diego native held off a spirited charge from Slovakia’s Rory Sabbatini, who posted a Kasumigaseki and Olympic record final round 61.
"For me I wanted this for my Dad more than anything, Schauffele told Golf Channel. “I tried to represent my country, and then my family. It was really fun."
Schauffele was introduced to golf by his dad and coach, Stefan. He picked up the game during the 1980s after hitting balls in a Tokyo department store simulator.
After an up-and-down for birdie at the drivable 17th, Schauffele missed the 18th fairway, wedged out and played this impressive third to set up his par:
WHAT. A .SHOT.@XSchauffele sticks it close on 18 - he'll putt for par and the gold medal 🥇#TokyoOlympics pic.twitter.com/Zk51SBQU0C
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) August 1, 2021
Schauffele joins George Lyon (1904) and Justin Rose (2016) as the only Gold medal winners in men’s golf. (If you count 1900, which most don’t, then Charles Sands is also in the club).
Heading into the event he was the 9-1 second choice while Sabbatini was a 150-1 longshot.
The 45-year-old Sabbatini birdied the 18th to set 17-under-par as the clubhouse leader on a day when multiple players had a shot at medaling. Sabbatini’s birdie putt included a celebration before the ball even reached the hole.
Sabbatini became a citizen of Slovakia in 2019 and is married to his Slovakian caddie, Martina.
The finale played out at around 3 a.m. ET/12 am PT on Golf Channel, but even well out of the prime time window when other sports take priority, NBC stuck with a round of 16 beach volleyball match between USA’s Claes/Sponsil vs. Canada’s Bansley/Wilkerson.
Golf’s return to the Games in Rio saw the network pick up the final 90-or-so minutes and, despite a less-exciting finish than 2021’s Schauffele win, averaged 8.8 million viewers. That made it the second most-watched golf event of 2016.
As of press time, the seven-way playoff for Bronze had not been decided.
As always, the Thursday edition is free for all but only subscribers get access to commenting and the archives. Plus, the Ryder Cup run-up should be a riot and there should be no shortage of major championship related news this fall. So climb aboard!
I did a full breakdown of The Open’s ratings in the free-weekly Quadrilateral, and thanks to SportsMediaWatch.com’s Paulsen sharing the actual Nielsen ratings vs. NBC’s “total audience delivery” factoring in other ways folks see the coverage, we get to see just how few stream golf.
That’s kind of important for the sport to recognize at some point in the hard push to turn television viewers into streamers, even (A) the technology is still not there (B) golf is a background sport and a passive viewing experience except for the last holes of a tournament. Since no one has made the streaming experience as simple as hitting the power button and a number, with the option to come and go easily, it will continue to be a less enjoyable viewing experience for live events.
I digress.
It looks like the 2021 Open delivered a generally solid showing given the number of weekend hours NBC carried coverage. For Immediate Release:
STAMFORD, Conn. – July 20, 2021 – NBC Sports’ comprehensive coverage of the 149th Open Championship at Royal St George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, Kent, England, delivered across-the-board viewership gains for NBC and GOLF Channel vs. 2019.
Across more than 40 hours of live championship coverage on NBC and GOLF Channel, the Open Championship produced a Total Audience Delivery of 2.148 million viewers, up 8% vs. the 2019 Open coverage (1.983 million TAD) and up 27% vs. the most-recent Open Championship at Royal St George’s in 2011 (1.697 million TV-only). Sunday’s Final Round coverage on NBC delivered a TAD of 4.169 million viewers, up 10% vs. 2019 (3.784 million).
Early Round viewership on GOLF Channel drew a TAD of 1.069 million viewers, up slightly vs. 2019 (1.065 million) to rank as the second most-watched Early Rounds on GOLF Channel in five years.
Of course, The Open’s only been on Golf Channel since 2016 so…
As I noted in The Quadrilateral’s wrap up, had a better week being off site than in Kent, with what seemed like more willingness to tackle a few subjects head on. You know, topics that are now avoided during PGA Tour coverage in fear of the red phone ringing. From the press release:
Week-long pre- and post-game Live From The Open coverage on GOLF Channel averaged 148,000 viewers, up 24% vs. 2019 to rank the most-watched week of Live From The Open since 2017 (161,000 viewers).
A wonderful compilation for the first Open without the great man. Though I do recall one other episode that sadly sleeps with the fishes but all in all a fantastic compilation:
Plus a quick roundup and links to The Open Final Qualifying results.
This one’s for all but if you like what you see, signing up is free.
Here is the R&A’s produced piece on Sam Forgan, who made it through qualifying to reach Royal St George’s.
Al Lunsford of Links chatted with Mike Whan on his way out of the LPGA Commissionership and into the USGA CEO job, where he says his immediate priority is to learn the rules and ask questions.
But his response to a question about the biggest obstacle to LPGA Tour popularity is a good reminder about what his successor faces:
I’ve always struggled with, “You just don’t deliver the viewership of the others.” Well, they’re paid to be on network TV 35 weeks a year; we write a check six times a year to be on network TV. If you asked me to run a 100-yard dash but I have to start 170 yards back, I don’t expect to win many races. We’ve closed the gap—virtually 12 years of viewership increases in the U.S. and around the world—but we’ve still never been given an equal playing field. It’s hard to engage with athletes you don’t see very much.
His comment about the LPGA having to pay to get on networks has been made before, but it’s still fascinating to hear given the recent gender equity talk.
Also noteworthy: Whan essentially says being on the Golf Channel means the tour is not seen very much. Psst…Mike, they host all of your new job’s events. Be nice!
Sports TV on Sunday
— John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) June 29, 2021
Women's Gymnastics Olympic Trials on NBC: 5.752 million viewers
Bucks-Hawks on TNT: 5.595 million
PGA Travelers on CBS: 3.972 million
Paulsen reports at Sports Media Watch on huge numbers for the Travelers, won by Harris English in a dramatic 8-hole playoff over Kramer Hickok that ran nearly two hours past CBS’s allotted window.
The final round averaged 3.97 million and peaked within 2 million of the recent U.S. Open’s highest audience number.
The telecast, which peaked with 6.66 million viewers from 8 PM ET to the conclusion, delivered the sixth-largest golf audience of the year and the third-largest with majors excluded. Only the final rounds of the Players (4.59M) and at Pebble Beach (4.19M) rank higher outside of the majors.
With the (suspicious) demise of ShowBuzzDaily.com, I don’t have access to the KPMG LPGA Championship final round rating. But Nelly Korda’s first major win ran concurrent to the Travelers in yet another reminder of golf’s scheduling issues.
A couple weekends ago I watched the end of two events: an Indy race on NBC and a competitive sailing competition on CBS.
At the Indy race, about ten drivers were interviewed to help fill time when the race ended early. This included a driver who crashed.
On the sailing, which was on tape, the American team’s jib broke, or someone’s Sperry’s slipped, I don’t know. But they were knocked out of the race and within seconds they went to the captain wearing a microphone to hear what went wrong. He answered while they were still reeling from what went wrong.
Both sports were also full of sound allowing us to eavesdrop on the proceedings. During the interviews, logos were visible, the drivers let you get to know them better and all that screen time pleased the people who write the checks.
Pro golf is going the opposite direction.
In-round interviews have died (again). Sound of conversations seems like it’s less prevalent. And now post-round interviews of anyone but the winner seem in danger.
Following Naomi Osaka’s French Open WD over post-round media stress , some golfers have opened up about how much pressure they feel from announcer criticisms or post round interviews. While these sessions generally don’t yield much, it’s still a shame that some feel questions starting with the world “how” or “talk about” can be seen as so stressful.
Of course writers and television will miss them and the shirt logo and watch deals might start to disappear, but mental health does take priority. And maybe if there is no danger of losing access, announcers can call the action more accurately.
Maybe these are isolated cases, but here’s a review of some recent comments on the topic, starting with Bubba Watson at the U.S. Open.
“The sad part for me is we celebrate every sport in the world. We celebrate accomplishments. We celebrate a guy scoring 50 points in the NBA. They are not saying quit shooting three-pointers. But we don't celebrate when a guy makes eight birdies or a guy bombs it 400 yards. I don't understand how we're not celebrating. We're trying to make golf courses bigger, harder, dumber, however you want to word it, but we're not celebrating our great players. I'm definitely not in that group of great players. I'm saying I want to see these guys hammering the ball. I want the next up-and-comer. I want a 6'8" guy not playing in the NBA, I want to see him on the PGA Tour bombing the ball. We're the only sport not celebrating accomplishments of being a guy working out in the gym that can hit the ball miles. We're mad at that guy. I don't know why, but we are. I'm not, but some people are -- golf course designers. The NBA, Tom Brady winning, throwing touchdowns, we celebrate that. ESPN talks about it nonstop. They don't ever talk about us chopping out of the -- hey, he laid up again. That's great. Anyway, that's my rant for the day.”
Given the influence his advice has had on Matthew Wolff, here is what Wolff had to say while dealing with undisclosed issues.
“I was talking to Bubba Watson earlier on the range this week and he told me he stopped watching golf, he only watches LPGA because they're so positive. He goes, LPGA is like the commentators, like everyone is just so positive, like every shot they hit is the best shot ever. And I think that -- and I'm not, I'm not like hating on the LPGA, I think it's awesome, because like these shots are hard out here and it's like, you know, sometimes they're describing a shot and they make it sound easy and it's not. And it's just, I'm only trying to have positive thoughts in my head and be positive. And I mean, kudos to pretty much every professional athlete out there, it's, I haven't been in this world for a long time, but it's fucking hard.”
And this in advance of the KPMG LPGA from Jessica Korda:
“You have fans coming to follow you, and if you're not playing your best, you obviously feel like you're disappointing everyone, and you get asked about it right after. It's never easy not playing well and then kind of answering the questions why because you're trying to figure it out yourself.”
This could just be a short term post-pandemic thing that will change when crowds come back and some normalcy returns. But this also could build momentum in the other direction and lead to more players saying no. I’m not sure that’s great for “growing the game,” but we’ll find out soon enough.
But this one went to all followers of the Quad so sign up and you would have had this in the inbox to enjoy reliving the 2013 delusions of grandeur.
On that note, I went looking for one of the late, great Frank Hannigan’s letters about the Fox deal. It’s still a gem.
Matthew Wolff after a U.S. Open first round 70, discussing at length his attitude and recent inability to find happiness on the course:
“I was talking to Bubba Watson earlier on the range this week and he told me he stopped watching golf, he only watches LPGA because they're so positive. He goes, LPGA is like the commentators, like everyone is just so positive, like every shot they hit is the best shot ever. And I think that -- and I'm not, I'm not like hating on the LPGA, I think it's awesome, because like these shots are hard out here and it's like, you know, sometimes they're describing a shot and they make it sound easy and it's not. And it's just, I'm only trying to have positive thoughts in my head and be positive. And I mean, kudos to pretty much every professional athlete out there, it's, I haven't been in this world for a long time, but it's fucking hard.”
I don’t think this will help announcers to feel emboldened to say what they think.
Two of the biggest non-men’s majors went up against each other last week and as they will in the foreseeable future unless schedulers push for change. Still, with nearly matching TV windows and the conclusions happening in annoying congruity, it’s not a shock to see CBS’s 2021 Memorial broadcast and NBC/Golf Channel’s U.S. Women’s Open delivered smaller audiences than hoped-for.
Final round coverage of the PGA Tour Memorial tournament averaged 2.82 million viewers on CBS last Sunday, marking the tournament’s smallest final round audience in three years (2.35M). Viewership fell 12% from last year, when the tournament marked Tiger Woods’ return from hiatus (3.28M), and 5% from 2019 — when Woods finished in the top ten (2.96M).
I suppose you could say the rating was pretty great all things considered, but with the previous day’s Rahm/COVID news, more were likely tuning in.
The U.S. Women’s Open went off split tees and played threesomes to fit NBC’s priority status for gymnastics given how it’s an Olympic year.
📺Ratings Notes📺
— Golf Channel PR (@GolfChannelPR) June 9, 2021
Coverage of the 2021 @uswomensopen averaged 600,000 viewers across @NBCSports and @GolfChannel, up 62% vs. 2020 and marking the most-watched U.S. Women's Open since 2016. pic.twitter.com/bHFdn8yZnX
It’s never a great look when a player WD’s from an event without an injury excuse, but in Shanshan Feng’s case it seems she made the right call to pass up the consolation match.
The Bank of Hope LPGA Match Play is a new event at Shadow Creek and it’s not off to a super start. The event was added in February and poorly scheduled by the LPGA. Going from match play in near 100-degree weather to San Francisco for the U.S. Women’s Open was not a great call, particularly with an LPGA event at nearby Lake Merced Golf Club the week after the Open (a great pre-U.S. Women’s Open test).
GolfDigest.com’s Kent Paisley noted many other elements that justify Feng’s decision to pass on the consolation match and the chance to win an additional $23,000.
Feng played a total of 112 holes over five days, more than anyone in the tournament. On Saturday alone she played 41 holes, outlasting her opponents in extra holes in both the Round of 16 and the quarterfinals.
Afterward, Feng confessed that she was so tired she thought about potentially dropping out of the event mid-match.
“There were quite a few times when I was on the course I was like, You know what, you've tried your best already. Yeah, maybe you just … you don't have to give it your 100 percent. You know, if you make any mistakes, it’s acceptable,” Feng said Saturday.
Also noteworthy for those who would argue this was unfair to the sponsor or television: Golf Channel opted to show two Playing Lessons reruns and a rebroadcast of the European Tour’s final round instead of the semi-final matches (either live or tape-delayed).
Not only did Bryson DeChambeau jump on one of Brooks Koepka’s efforts at light ribbing, but so did PGA Champion Phil Mickelson.
For those tracking the Player Impact Program race instead of the Comcast Business Solutions No One Will Play The Wyndham Regardless chase, that’s 98.2k likes for Brooks, 24.5k for Bryson and 48.6k for Phil. We’ll let the algo comprised of Meltwater Mentions x MVP Index x Google Searches x Tuesday’s temperature in Ponte Vedra decides who wins.
But Bryson also made a quiet Instagram story play WITH Photoshopping (bonus points!), as caught here by No Laying Up:
But wait, there’s more pic.twitter.com/XBGiM9f73j
— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp) May 26, 2021
This all came on a day when Tom Brady joined in the fun to promote The Match with some epic meme trolling of Aaron Rodgers and a funny, maybe a tad edgy reply by Bryson.
Glorious!
Except in the State-guided media world.
As I noted in an earlier post, NBC/Golf Channel is “investigating” the origins of the video. And while the episode is a little embarrassing in various ways for Koepka and the network’s leadership, it amounts to a very small deal in the grand scheme and hopefully will not lead to a low paid, overworked employee losing their job.
Given the incredible number of times the clip was watched before getting taken down—as many saw it as tuned in for the final round of the PGA—you’d think media operations constantly searching for “engagement” and “impressions” with a young, hip, male audience would be reporting the above fun that does possibly have ramifications for the Ryder Cup.
The efforts to run from such good fodder suggest this is a grave matter at the Global Home and their internal “listening” reports are being drawn up to analyze the reactions. (GolfChannel.com and PGATour.com have touched no part of the social fodder while GolfDigest.com has buried an item on it where stories go to die, also known as The Loop…yes it still exists.)
So I guess the attempts at make this gaffe go away tells us not to expect an update on the Player Impact Program ramifications. Darn.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
