It turns out Augusta wasn’t the only place Masters champion Tiger Woods put up incredible numbers with his glorious golf game.
Word of Tiger’s tilt with tournament history brought viewers to their TVs in droves.
CBS Sports got a record 15.8 overnight rating for a Sunday Masters finale. And that swelled to 22.2 in the telecast’s final half-hour, when Woods received his mantle of victory, the traditional Masters green jacket.
How big is a 15.8? It is up 65 percent from last year’s Sunday rating for CBS’ final-round coverage of the Masters. When the overnight is formulated into a final national rating Tuesday, it should top CBS’ previous Masters record of 11.9 for the final round in 1975.
What that means is Woods has not only ushered the fabled tournament into a new era by rewriting the record books–most dramatically with his 270 final score and 12-stroke victory–but may do the same for TV golf ratings.
All four days of the tournament, Thursday and Friday on USA Network and Saturday and Sunday on CBS, showed whopping gains over last year.
As with CBS’ ratings reward Sunday, USA had its highest-ever golf audience on Friday. The 3.6 was up 50 percent from last year’s second-round coverage on USA.
And the Thursday and Saturday ratings were no slouches, either. USA’s 2.4 for first-round coverage was up 33 percent from last year, while CBS’ 8.6 Saturday overnight, up 43 percent from last year, was the network’s highest mark for a Saturday Masters telecast since 1972.
Although they might have thought the set needed adjusting (yes, that really was a rookie pro whaling the daylights out of the world’s best golfers in the Masters), a huge TV audience got caught up in Tigermania.
Did the Tiger factor became more compelling TV than the lack of competition?
“Absolutely,” said CBS Sports President Sean McManus. “Going into a telecast, you want a close tournament. But you don’t expect a historic story like this. It’s the most compelling story line imaginable, even though you already know the final results.”
No extra cameras were assigned to Woods, said McManus, “and I was proud that we showed a lot of other golfers and their shots. We documented the other stories.”
But while the network’s crew did their obligatory monitoring of the competition, they and the audience could clearly see there was none on this historic weekend.
As early as the 13th hole on Sunday’s final round, veteran CBS analyst Ken Venturi, a former player who is cautious about such things, announced, “There’s no catching Tiger Woods.”
Venturi’s call was likely overdue and certainly not premature. The 21-year-old finished with two birdies and three pars to become the youngest player and first African-American to win the Masters.
“A virtuoso performance like Augusta has never seen,” was announcer Jim Nantz’s summation. It was so dominating that even that ad logo so prominent on Woods’ clothing looked like a check mark of approval. Talk about return on advertising investment.
That logo was not lost to viewers until the young champion, overcome by the reality of what he had accomplished, removed his hat and buried his sweater in his father’s embrace off the 18th green.
