Masters: If TV numbers go down, there will be a full-blown panic for golf

AUGUSTA, Ga. – I'm not really interested in LIV golf. The 54 holes. The courses. The team aspect. The shotgun launch. Maybe even the players wear shorts.

Judging by the television ratings, I'm not alone.

I don't really care about the watered down PGA Tour either. Too few stars. Too little drama. The feeling of disappointment that what was once great is less great.

Judging by the television ratings, I'm not alone.

This is not about supporting one side or the other in the Gulf Civil War. It's not about politics or mutual funds or anything other than that watching the actual golf just isn't as entertaining as it used to be… or at least it seems.

Here too, judging by the television ratings, I am not alone.

“If you look at the data this year, golf viewership on linear television is down while other sports, some other sports are up,” Augusta National Chairman Fred Ridley said Wednesday. “So you can draw your own conclusions.

“The fact that the best players in the world don’t get together very often certainly doesn’t help,” Ridley continued. “I don’t know whether there is a direct causal effect or not. But I think it would be much better if they were together more often.”

It would. And at least this week they will be, making the 88th Masters an experience that will make golf fans' mouths water. For this short period of time (and the three majors that follow), the game of golf might actually feel like a game of golf.

You want 72 holes of Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson and Scottie Scheffler and Tiger Woods and Xander Schauffele and so on and so forth? Well, here it is. Also Amen Corner.

And that makes this a critical moment for the sport.

Will millions, even 10 million, still watch as always, or has the fractured sport's growing interest even carried over to its premier event?

PGA Tour ratings are down about 20 percent year-over-year.

“That’s a fifth, that’s big,” McIlroy said last week at the Valero Texas Open. “Twenty percent is a pretty shocking number.”

Meanwhile, LIV Golf stopped reporting its numbers last year, but Nielsen knows that ratings on the CW are often under 100,000 and haven't topped half a million this year.

Even the rare success story comes with an asterisk. On February 4, the LIV Mayakoba finals attracted a season-high 432,000 viewers. However, it was beaten more than three to one by the 1.7 million viewers who watched a replay of the third round of the PGA Tour's weather-affected AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am.

The LIV Las Vegas finale the following week only managed 297,000 viewers.

Last year, 12.06 million watched the final round of the Masters on CBS, matching recent history. Numbers may vary depending on participants or external factors – 2019 started in the morning to avoid weather and 2020 was played in the fall due to COVID.

Will so many tune in again? Will it be more due to pent-up demand to finally see the best of the best compete against each other? Or will it be lower because part of the public has given up the sport or has fallen out of the habit of playing golf?

The Masters is supposed to be bulletproof, an event that stands above all else because of its history, tradition and location.

But …

“I just think about the fights and everything else [has gone] In the last few years, people have just gotten really tired [by] it,” McIlroy said. “And it scares people away from professional men’s golf. That’s not good for anyone.”

If the numbers drop this week there will be a full-blown panic in sports.