So, I got into this whole thing about golf TV ratings a while back. It started pretty simply, really. Got into a bit of a debate with a buddy, you know the type, about whether golf was actually popular anymore or just something old guys watched. He was saying it’s dying, I figured it still pulled decent numbers, especially for the big tournaments. Seemed simple enough to check, right?
Starting the Dig
Well, that’s where the fun began. I figured I’d just hop online and find some neat charts or official reports. Easy peasy. Hah. First thing I noticed was, everyone quotes numbers, but finding the raw data, or even just a consistent source, was a pain. One site would say X million viewers, another would have a slightly different number, maybe rounded differently or using a different metric. It was all over the place.
I started just jotting down numbers I found from sports news sites and press releases whenever a tournament finished. Just the majors at first – The Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open, The Open Championship. Then I added The Players Championship and a few other big PGA Tour events. I wasn’t using anything fancy, just a basic spreadsheet on my computer. Trying to track:
- Tournament Name
- Year
- Reported Viewership (final round usually)
- Source (just the site name, no links!)
- Any notes, like if Tiger Woods was playing or if there was a big weather delay.
What I Found (or Didn’t)
Okay, some things were obvious. Yeah, when Tiger plays, especially if he’s near the lead, the numbers go up. Like, noticeably. No surprise there, the guy moves the needle. Other big names help too, but not on the same level.
But then things got murky. Sometimes a really exciting finish wouldn’t seem to rate as high as I expected. Other times, a less interesting tournament would pull better numbers than I thought. And comparing year-over-year got tricky fast. Different networks, different ways of counting (streaming viewers? out-of-home viewing?), it felt like comparing apples and oranges sometimes.
It started to feel less like solid data and more like marketing spin half the time. You’d see headlines like “Most-watched final round since 2018!” which sounds great, but maybe 2018 was unusually low for some reason, or maybe they changed how they counted viewers. It was hard to get a real sense of the trend without feeling like someone was trying to sell me on how popular everything was.
Just Got Annoying
Honestly, after a few months of trying to keep track, it just got frustrating. Finding consistent numbers felt like way too much work for a simple curiosity. It wasn’t like checking box scores or stock prices where the data is pretty standardized. This felt… fuzzy. Like everyone just grabbed whatever number sounded best for their article that day.
It reminded me of trying to figure out website traffic back in the day before good analytics tools. Everyone claimed huge numbers, but you never really knew what was real. Same vibe here. Who are these Nielsen people anyway, and how do they really know how many folks are watching a specific channel at a specific time? Seems kinda old-fashioned if you ask me.
So, I kinda trailed off keeping my little spreadsheet updated. It sits on my hard drive, probably outdated now. I still read the headlines about golf ratings when they pop up after a major, but I take them with a huge grain of salt. It’s popular enough, sure, but figuring out exactly how popular? Good luck. Seems like nobody really knows, or at least, nobody’s sharing the full picture in one easy place.
