By Joy Chakravarty, Sport360
Tiger Woods may have fallen short of completing a dream turnaround in his fortunes for the season at the Wyndham Championship, but the former world No1 once again proved that he remains the biggest attraction in the sport.
After missing the cut at the PGA Championship, Woods made a last-minute entry in the tournament at Greensboro. He was 187th in the FedEx Cup standings, and the only guaranteed way he could have made it to the Playoffs, which start this week, was by winning.
The moment Woods confirmed he would be teeing off, the golf fans in Greensboro went nuts.
It was Woods’ first appearance in what is one of the oldest events on the PGA Tour, and the organisers responded to the fan frenzy by printing 49,000 additional tickets for the four days.
The tournament director later explained they would have sold more, but were not in a position to manage those numbers with the resources they had.
All 49,000 tickets, as expected were sold out, helped no doubt by the fact that Woods was joint leader at the halfway stage, and in contention going into the final day for the first time in more than two years.
In the end, the final attendance figure of 143,000 was an all-time record for a tournament that was first held in 1938.
It also got record eyeballs on TV. The overnight television ratings for Sunday was 3.9 points, the best in 22 years of live telecast of the event by CBS. That was up 220 per cent viewership from last year.
On Saturday, the TVR was 3.2, again a record in 22 years. Just to compare, the final round of the PGA Championship, despite the presence of Jordan Spieth in the leadergroup and all the excitement with it being a major, got a rating of 5.1 points.
This best explains why Woods still ended up earning $50.6 million despite making a meager $108,275 on the PGA Tour last year with endorsements making up the rest. Whether he is struggling or just steamrolling the field, everyone still wants to see him play.
Europe and Asia
The intense rumours that the European Tour, as well as the PGA Tour, were trying to buy out the Asian Tour, have been finally set to rest with the recent announcement of a “joint vision” for European and Asian Tours.
New European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley has called it a “merger of membership”, but most questions remained unanswered at the time of the announcement. This includes certain deals that have been struck by both Tours in the past. For example, what happens to Asian Tour’s 12-year contract that gave all media rights to IMG Media?
Pelley has assured all nitty-gritties are being worked out, but if everything goes well, this will be a shot in the arm for both the Tours.
Not many weeks are free on the European Tour schedule, but there are several smaller tournaments with prize money in the region of €1-1.5 million. On the other hand, the Asian Tour calendar is bone dry in the middle season.
For Asian Tour, this should give them enough arsenal to fight off rival organisers, OneAsia. For the European Tour, such a deal means the PGA Tour cannot encroach on a profitable territory. After all, the Americans taking over the China Golf Tour must have sent shivers up the collective spines at Wentworth.
And of course, it gives Asian Tour, which was not making any headway in mainland China after falling out with the Chinese Golf Federation, some kind of a back-door entry, thanks to the excellent relationship Europe have with them.
This article is shared in partnership with Sport360
