U.S. Open ratings down 20%....WHY?

U.S. Open ratings down 20%....WHY?

  • Rory's run away win made it boring?

    Votes: 21 21.9%
  • No Tiger?

    Votes: 56 58.3%
  • Phil not on the leaderboard?

    Votes: 6 6.3%
  • Other

    Votes: 13 13.5%

  • Total voters
    96
I'm growing a Rory-do and the visor is overflowing now. Visor runneth over type of thing. He could rock it well

Nice, I think I've seen a video with some idiot wearing a visor with hear "runneth over type of thing" can't remember who though.
 
do you think Rory could ever be 'fully embraced' in the US like G-Mac is/was if RM continues to win? Or do you think the fact that he's Euro will always holf him back here in the US?

Sure, if he can sign and play the US tour. He associated himself with IJP and Westwood last year and did his image/rep some damage imo. I'm a big fan of Padraigs, and Graeme the difference is they seem plenty happy on the US tour. Rory dropped his card for whatever reason so "today" he is just another euro.

I don't dislike euros but I do hate complainers, pot stirrers.
 
part of it was that you lost the casual-casual viewer when Tiger dropped out, lost the other casual viewer when phil was out of it and rory ran away with it (with part of it being nobody in the outside of golf relm knowing who rory is). those were givens by the weekend.

I think the us open really lost viewers when they started losing the actual golf fans (people like me) on the weekend. Now I did watch all the late night replay's, so that's one thing; however with the course being such a joke of a us open set up (especially on the weekend, I covered this in the us open thread), by the time rory got to number 3 on sunday everybody knew it was over because there weren't places for him to give shots back. The thing with golf is that it competes with itsself. The people who like to watch golf also like to play golf, and the majority of those folks play on the weekends. If you don't have something that's compelling, if the weather cooperates then the golf fan is more likely to be out playing golf over sitting inside watching it.

I liked watching rory dominate, a lot of the shots, and putts, he hit were magnificant to watch all week. However by sunday afternoon I felt like it was groundhog day and saw playing as being more interesting (having the option to watch the replay, i can't say how much that factored in, it was a factor to a certain degree). I'd imagine i'm far from the only one.

Then comes the ever present "would you have watched if it was eldrick", under the conditions of what happened this year, probably not. I was dismayed at how the course was playing. If we're comparing it to pebble in 00, to me that's a different story. I felt, and said as much, that I thought I was seeing the start of something special with rory winning and running away with it, so that wasn't an issue for me. However it's obviously far more compelling to watch a guy dominate on a course where no one else can break par, over watching a guy lap the field on a course that yielded scores that would have won the majority of the previous us opens.
 
No Tiger...has to be the case for the general public.

JB's right. They would've tuned in if Tiger won by 50 strokes.
 
part of it was that you lost the casual-casual viewer when Tiger dropped out, lost the other casual viewer when phil was out of it and rory ran away with it (with part of it being nobody in the outside of golf relm knowing who rory is). those were givens by the weekend.

I think the us open really lost viewers when they started losing the actual golf fans (people like me) on the weekend. Now I did watch all the late night replay's, so that's one thing; however with the course being such a joke of a us open set up (especially on the weekend, I covered this in the us open thread), by the time rory got to number 3 on sunday everybody knew it was over because there weren't places for him to give shots back. The thing with golf is that it competes with itsself. The people who like to watch golf also like to play golf, and the majority of those folks play on the weekends. If you don't have something that's compelling, if the weather cooperates then the golf fan is more likely to be out playing golf over sitting inside watching it.

I liked watching rory dominate, a lot of the shots, and putts, he hit were magnificant to watch all week. However by sunday afternoon I felt like it was groundhog day and saw playing as being more interesting (having the option to watch the replay, i can't say how much that factored in, it was a factor to a certain degree). I'd imagine i'm far from the only one.

Then comes the ever present "would you have watched if it was eldrick", under the conditions of what happened this year, probably not. I was dismayed at how the course was playing. If we're comparing it to pebble in 00, to me that's a different story. I felt, and said as much, that I thought I was seeing the start of something special with rory winning and running away with it, so that wasn't an issue for me. However it's obviously far more compelling to watch a guy dominate on a course where no one else can break par, over watching a guy lap the field on a course that yielded scores that would have won the majority of the previous us opens.

Would you respect me if I disagreed about the course. The course was playing the same for everyone but Rory was just playing on a different level. I walked the course myself I was there thursday and from what I saw was people who were playing scared compared to Rory who was playing to win. It was a nice win but like I said in my other post by friday night everyone knew ti was Rorys to lose hence the drop in ratings
 
do you think Rory could ever be 'fully embraced' in the US like G-Mac is/was if RM continues to win? Or do you think the fact that he's Euro will always holf him back here in the US?

I dont think his heritage matters as much as where he plays week in and week out.

Would you respect me if I disagreed about the course. The course was playing the same for everyone but Rory was just playing on a different level. I walked the course myself I was there thursday and from what I saw was people who were playing scared compared to Rory who was playing to win. It was a nice win but like I said in my other post by friday night everyone knew ti was Rorys to lose hence the drop in ratings

It was playing the same for everybody, but it was not playing anywhere near what every other US Open for the last 2 decades was like. Multiple guys shooting 65s and that many people under par is not what should be called "the hardest test in golf".
 
It was playing the same for everybody, but it was not playing anywhere near what every other US Open for the last 2 decades was like. Multiple guys shooting 65s and that many people under par is not what should be called "the hardest test in golf".

Very true just look back at bethpage black but the weather was the cause for the low numbers in the weeks leading up to the Open it didn't rain like they wanted and the rough never reached its potential. But with that said it didn't matter since we rarely saw Rory in the rough. Even with this being the longest US open in history it didn't play long enough in my opinion since these guys were still below par as you pointed out JB
 
Hands down in my opinion Tiger Woods is the most exciting golfer to watch. Give Rory a year or two and he may have a stronger crowd following him, but without Tiger playing the ratings are going to go down.
 
The ratings were down because Tiger is the draw for millions of viewers, many of whom can't name any other golfer on tour, or if they can name another they wouldn't be able to pick him out of a lineup.
 
Not only did we not have Tiger but we did not have the kind of excitement generated by the way both Tiger and Phil scramble. Rory just hit perfect shot after perfect shot and you were left questioning how tough the course was and questioning whether Rory was approaching the course aggressively or not. Watching someone hit perfect shot after perfect shot does not make very compelling TV. Since the rough was not what was planned for a US Open you could tell that even being in the rough was not as punishing as it is normally. There is a difference between hitting a 3i or a 3w up to the green for a chance at eagle on a par 5 and doing it from the rough having to hook it around a tree.

This is where the coverage hurt as well because you have to believe there were at least some interesting shots to watch out there but the way the programming was planned, viewers missed a good deal of golf. No question but that the main issue was no Tiger.

In the era of channel surfing I think it was just too easy to run into some channel that had something more interesting to watch, like bass fishing.
 
Tiger fans, not golf fans.
 
I'm going to say the first two...watching Rory was fun but no one was pushing him. TW still moves the needle, no question.
 
BTW: Did anyone else think that Congressional, while beautiful, lacked memorable holes? We all remember 10 because that's what everyone was worried about, but that's about it. I never knew what hole they were on unless they showed it on the telecast.
 
BTW: Did anyone else think that Congressional, while beautiful, lacked memorable holes? We all remember 10 because that's what everyone was worried about, but that's about it. I never knew what hole they were on unless they showed it on the telecast.

I'll always remember #18 the television didn't do that hole justice. From the tee box to the fairway it was so narrow. Maybe three cars wide and they were landing it in the fairway over 300 downhill and to that green was crazy. Granted I was there thursday :D
 
It twas no tiger. Tiger brings the casual person to the golf world.
 
As an avid golfer I watch pro golf for the shots these guys pull off. Watching Rory was inspiring. Absolutely fearless performance. Those 20% missed out on the right way to close out an opponent.
 
People are becoming disinterested with American Golf because tiger is not there. If Tiger had shown up, the ratings would have been great because they would have seen Rory beat "the man" in Tiger. I think it's awful to have the ratings down that much because of 1 person. There are other great players that most people, unless you watch golf every week, would not know (Patrick Cantlay, Kevin Chappel, Robert Garrigus, etc) that were in the hunt.
 
I have enjoyed reading all the great comments. I agree with most of them. I feel that:

- Rory is a great player, but to the casual fan he is just another foreigner; unless he joins the US tour I doubt he will ever be fully embraced by the causal American fan.

- To the casual fan...Rory is no better than Louis Oosthuizen or Charles Schwartel..just another foreigner that comes from no where & wins a major

- & like other people have said...Tiger was a child prodigy...by winning all the US amateurs....then dominating on tour....to Americans...he was the fulfillment of
greatness

- plus Tiger made golf cool....because he played with swagger & backed it up. Over the last 10+ years most of the best back 9 duels in majors have included
Tiger....& Tiger normally won.

- Why are Phil & Tiger so popular...The attempt & try golf shots that even other pros don't try. When you watch them play it is must watch TV because you don't
want to miss a great shot. Phil's shot from the straw at Augusta or so many of Tiger's shots...must watch TV!

All of this is coming at a bad time for the PGA tour with them in negotiations a new contract....really bad timing :{

I know a lot of people don't like Tiger because his attitude or what he did. I understand that. I guess to me...athletes are just that...they are not role models...I don't really care what they do off the field or court.
 
People are becoming disinterested with American Golf because tiger is not there. If Tiger had shown up, the ratings would have been great because they would have seen Rory beat "the man" in Tiger. I think it's awful to have the ratings down that much because of 1 person. There are other great players that most people, unless you watch golf every week, would not know (Patrick Cantlay, Kevin Chappel, Robert Garrigus, etc) that were in the hunt.

I'm not thinking they would have seen that at all. Tiger would have been a non-issue in this tournament if he had participated, imo.
 
Golf is just not really made for TV. It works if you have announcers saying "I just don't have any idea how he pulled that shot off". It does not work if they are saying "another magnificently played hole by xyz". Sorry, it just doesn't. There are not enough of us that can appreciate the difficulty of what Rory did and there are definitely not enough of us that care, not when you are discussing TV ratings. Unfortunately as much as anything, how an event plays on TV has an impact on the gate as well in some instances compelling fans to go see the next event live where Rory's performance was I am sure much more impressive in all respects.
 
As an avid golfer I watch pro golf for the shots these guys pull off. Watching Rory was inspiring. Absolutely fearless performance. Those 20% missed out on the right way to close out an opponent.

This... my eyes were glued to the TV.
 
Would you respect me if I disagreed about the course. The course was playing the same for everyone but Rory was just playing on a different level. I walked the course myself I was there thursday and from what I saw was people who were playing scared compared to Rory who was playing to win. It was a nice win but like I said in my other post by friday night everyone knew ti was Rorys to lose hence the drop in ratings

I respect all respectful opinions. i respect yours. You were there, I was not, so your opinion would be of better judgement of mine. I'm going by the scores and what I saw on tv, which is (obviously) not the same as live and in person. I agree that everyone played the same course and rory whooped everyone on that course and that is accomplishment should be in no way diminished.

As JB said in the post just below the one you quoted of mine, it did not play like a traditional us open, the scores indicate as such and the weather was a huge factor in that..
..My biggest issue (and this is something I feel more cognisant of because it was mentioned on the telecast in interviews with Mike Davis and in other reports) with what happened at this us open is that the usga went the opposite direction of their normal philosophy. Instead of doing whatever they could to work with the weather/course to make it as difficult as possible (growing out the rough and tough pin locations was all they had to work with since the rain negated the severity of the slope which was originally supposed to be the main defense for the course), the usga went for a shootout. Davis said they were going to mow the rough on the weekend and they put a lot of pins in bowls on the green (where the ball would funnel back to the hole), they tried to turn the us open into the masters, scoring wise. That just didn't sit right with me personally, and that's something i'm always going to think about when thinking about this open...Again, that's nothing against what rory did, as you said he was playing the same conditions everyone else was, and he beat them so bad they were making jokes on the telecast on sunday about guys battling it out for the b flight (second place). That's a credit to rory, regardless of conditions
 
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