PGA's TV ratings aren't a pretty picture
GOLF / THE SPIN
Numbers for the Tour Championship are down from last year. Meanwhile, there's lots of talk about fixing the FedEx Cup.
They weren't going to punt, but going up against the NFL on Sunday wasn't the best set of circumstances for the PGA Tour, its Tour Championship and the final act in the FedEx Cup.
With no drama (Vijay Singh had already clinched it) and no Tiger (he's sidelined), the Tour Championship got no ratings. Well, that's not accurate, so let's just say that given the factors going against it, the Tour Championship got thrown for a loss.
Saturday's third round on NBC had an overnight Nielsen rating of 1.3, down 46.4% from last year's 2.8 (that turned out to be a 2.6 in the final rating).
Sunday's fourth round had an overnight rating of 1.8, down 54.5% from last year's 3.3 (a 3.0 final rating).
In the meantime, there's a lot of talk about how to tweak the FedEx points system so it's not over before it's over (get Yogi Berra?), so it's slightly less volatile (after complaints last year it wasn't volatile enough) and to deal with maybe some other stuff, such as seeing if there's a way to make sure a winner of two of the four majors isn't excluded from the field (as Padraig Harrington was this year.)
What's not being discussed in the analysis is that the four players who had a chance to win over the last four holes at East Lake Golf Club were about as good as you can get: Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Anthony Kim, Camilo Villegas. The Tour got lucky with that foursome, and the golf they played lived up to the reputations of all four.
Some critics are complaining that although they liked the events in FedEx Cup playoffs, they didn't like the playoffs themselves.
Exactly what that means is unknown, because the playoffs are the events. Besides, what would you rather be watching instead of the Tour Championship, the Texas Open?
At the same time, the fact cannot be avoided that the FedEx Cup ratings were anemic at best.
The playoff event before the Tour Championship, the BMW, had a 1.1 rating on Saturday (down from a 2.6); and a 1.2 on Sunday (down from a 3.2). The other two playoff events -- the Barclays and the Deutsche Bank -- also showed a decline in ratings.
Two pieces of advice: Wait till next year; hope Tiger plays.
Moving on up
Villegas, 26, who won at the BMW and then the Tour Championship, passed $8 million in career earnings and moved 10 places, to a career-best No. 7 in the Official World Ranking.
Moving on down
