NBC drew a 3.1 overnight for the final round of The Players yesterday, which saw Jason Day take the victory by four strokes in a wire-to-wire win. That figure is down 21% from a 3.9 overnight last year, when Rickie Fowler beat Kevin Kisner in a sudden-death playoff following a three-hole aggregate playoff that also featured Sergio Garcia. The top of this year's leaderboard also lacked marquee names, with Rory McIlroy finishing tied for 12th and Fowler, Jordan Spieth, Phil Mickelson all missing the cut. However, the 3.1 overnight yesterday is up 19% from a 2.6 for Martin Kaymer’s one-stroke win over Jim Furyk in '14. Tiger Woods' two-stroke win at the event in '13 drew a 5.7 overnight (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
FINDING A FIT FOR FEHERTY: GOLFWEEK's Martin Kaufmann wrote NBC "still hasn’t figured out how best to utilize" analyst David Feherty, who is new to the network this year. He often "disappears for extended periods, and when we do hear from him, it’s often something perfunctory -- a few words about a player’s club selection or wind direction." NBC on Saturday "sent out Feherty and Roger Maltbie together with the final threesome." NBC has "used this alignment several times this season." This is being done to "take advantage of the network’s depth of on-air talent, but it seems to be having the opposite effect." There also has not been "any sign of the chemistry NBC predicted would develop" between lead analyst Johnny Miller and Feherty. One positive from Feherty’s move to NBC is that he is "not as inclined to go off the rails verbally as he was at CBS" (GOLFWEEK.com, 5/15).
