Woods' win helped NBC beat out the previous high, a 4.3 rating in '99, when he also wonGETTY IMAGES
NBC yesterday drew a 4.4 overnight rating for Tiger Woods’ two-stroke win at the Tour Championship, likely marking the event’s best final round on record. The win was Woods’ first on the PGA Tour since ’13. The previous high for the final round was a 4.3 overnight on ABC in ’99, which was Woods' first win at East Lake. That telecast aired in late October. The high mark under the Tour’s current FedExCup Playoff format was a 3.3 overnight in both ’09 and ’07. In ’09, Phil Mickelson beat Woods by three strokes, while Woods won in ’07 by eight strokes. Last year, NBC drew a 1.5 overnight as Xander Schauffele won by one stroke over Justin Thomas. Meanwhile, on Golf Channel, the lead-in to the final round from 12:00-1:30pm drew a 0.7 overnight, marking the cable net’s best Sunday lead-in for the Tour Championship on record (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
GOING INSIDE THE PEACOCK: THE ATHLETIC's Richard Deitsch wrote NBC did well navigating "multiple storylines" yesterday. NBC Sports lead golf producer Tommy Roy said Woods' storyline "trumped" that of the FedExCup. Roy: "There was no issue here. People often say, ‘Did you show Tiger too much?’ Well, he was the leader all day long. There would be no valid criticism there today. If people want to critique whether we talked enough about the FedEx Cup, that can be debated." Deitsch noted NBC "got one of the most memorable gallery sequences we have ever seen" as Woods approached the 18th green. Roy said, “That scene just unfolded before us and we captured it. ... I don’t think the Tour planned on letting all the people rush the fairway. They typically don’t do it so we certainly did not have any idea it was going to happen but once it did, we stayed with it.” NBC delivered the "right imagery in the moments that mattered." They also got an "emotional Woods in the trophy ceremony answering questions from Hicks." Roy did say that Justin Rose’s speech for winning the FedExCup was "unfortunately cut off early because they had a tight hit time (the time they needed to get off the air)" (THEATHLETIC.com, 9/24).
SETTING A CLEAN TABLE: NBC's Dan Hicks early in yesterday's coverage "alerted viewers that the network would take more commercial breaks early in the show so it could go commercial-free 'down the stretch of this thing for the last few hours.'"GOLFWEEK's Martin Kaufmann wrote networks "don’t do that for Jordan Spieth or Justin Thomas or Rickie Fowler or Justin Rose or Dustin Johnson or even Phil Mickelson" (GOLFWEEK.com, 9/23).
