Tiger Woods may not win trophies, but he surely increases TV ratings
The fourteen time major championship winner, Tiger Woods, didn’t manage to do so well in his first tournament of the 2011 season this week.
Playing in the Farmers Insurance Open, Woods managed to finish tied for 44th place. With Woods playing in the tournament, the TV ratings sky rocketed showing how important Woods is for these channels.
In the first round coverage of the Farmer’s Insurance Open, Golf Channel averaged just under 1 million views. Due to Tiger participating, the Golf Channel achieved a 1.0 household rating on January 27th.
According, to data analyzed, this was the best ever for the channel’s coverage of the tourney in San Diego. With all these ratings, some even begin to wonder, can players not named Tiger Woods draw ratings?
It is true that Woods is talented and skilled, but that doesn’t mean the others are not talented enough. Can players like Bubba Watson, who won the Farmers Insurance Open, give channels these many ratings?
Doesn’t seem like it since the major excitement at Torrey Pines wasn’t to see who won the tournament, but how well Tiger played. As compared to last year, the ratings this time were up 89% over last year on Thursday, and 115% on Friday. The main reason
for such a difference was merely the presence of golf’s former top cat, Woods.
Woods played decent in the first two rounds but things got bad afterwards. Heading into the final round eight shots behind, Tiger posted a 75 on Sunday. Ending his five-tournament winning streak at Torrey Pines, Woods surely disappointed himself and his
fans.
Tiger had never finished out of the top 10 at Torrey pines before, and forty four is a long way from tenth position.
Another player not happy with his performance was Mickelson, who was in a really strong position going into the final round. Being one shot behind, Mickelson had to make an eagle to force a playoff between him and Watson, but couldn’t really manage it.
“I’m disappointed”, Mickelson said. “I wanted to start the year off with a win. On the other hand, I played really good golf”.
Disappointments might be new to “Lefty”, but Woods should be used to them by now. Last year, Woods experienced what was the worst downfall in the history of golf. Not having won a tournament since November 2009, Tiger is hoping to do well in the next event
he plays in.
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