In the end, only one shot mattered at the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational.
And in the end, most of the golf world failed to see it.
The moment arrived on the 16th hole on Sunday afternoon, as Russell Henley stared down the short-sided eagle chip that would change the fortunes of his PGA Tour career. The 16th, a short par-5 by PGA Tour standards, has long played as the easiest hole relative to par at Bay Hill, so much so that The King himself had it shortened to a par-4 for several years. Sunday was no different. Trailing Collin Morikawa by one, Henley needed a birdie to bring things back to even, which meant he needed to keep his chip close to the flagstick.
The ensuing high, spinning chip Henley popped out of the greenside rough was the kind you might have seen on NBC’s telecast live, had the network been showing golf. But in the moment Henley made contact NBC was not showing golf. It was showing a minute-long Rolex commercial.
Had the Rolex advertisement run for 59 seconds, the golf world might have seen the entirety of the shot that altered Henley’s career and the shape of the Arnold Palmer Invitational in real-time. But it ran for 61, and the golf world saw only Henley’s ball after it skittered across the green and into the cup for an eagle three, veering the telecast from synthy commercial notes into the tournament’s biggest moment like a five-lane sweep into the exit ramp.
The NBC team recovered quickly, immediately showing a replay of the shot and later returning to show the highlight from several angles, but the damage was done. By the time they returned to commercial, the reality set in. The tournament’s complexion had changed in an instant, and NBC had missed most of it.
By the time the tournament ended a half-hour later, Henley’s chip-in had gone from a game-changing highlight to the tournament’s defining moment, which only served to underscore the frustration many fans directed toward NBC for missing it. But what exactly happened to cause this situation, and who deserves the blame? Let’s rip through a quick timeline to help us understand, beginning with the moment that set off the scramble.
- 00:00 Collin Morikawa hits his approach into the 16th green from the fairway. The ball rolls down a bank toward the flagstick. As it approaches the hole Henley is visible in the background crossing a bridge and walking up to the green.
- 17 seconds later: NBC shifts from replays of Morikawa’s approach to Corey Conners’ tee shot into the par-3 17th. Conners trails by one, and a close approach on this hole would put him in the driver’s seat. Instead, he hits his shot to the back rough.
- 47 seconds later: NBC quickly pivots from Conners’ tee shot into the one-minute Rolex commercial.
- 1 minute and 47 seconds later: The commercial ends and the screen flips to black for a second.
- 1 minute and 48 seconds later: The broadcast returns with Henley’s ball rolling on the green and captures as it falls into the bottom of the hole.
So, what happened?
It’s easy to point the finger at NBC’s production team for failing to navigate seamlessly in and out of the break, but after rewatching the sequence, there’s not much fat left to trim. From Morikawa’s approach to Henley’s chip is a gap of one minute and 48 seconds. Perhaps NBC could have gotten into the commercial a second sooner after Conners’ missed tee shot on the 17th, when the network went to Brad Faxon for 5 seconds of analysis. But in that moment, Conners was as close to leading the golf tournament as Henley. The decision is hard to second-guess.
Of course, some amount of blame belongs to the whims of live golf, where there are 18 playing fields and as many as 72 balls in play at any moment. Unlike other sports, golf does not stop when its networks go to commercial, which means there is always the chance, however small, that a big moment will be missed entirely. It is largely the responsibility of the professionals employed by networks — an army of producers and directors — to ensure that those commercials are aired judiciously to avoid these slip-ups whenever possible. Often these professionals are good enough that audiences miss only fodder. But sometimes they bet on Russell Henley taking 120 seconds to hit a consequential chip shot and he only takes 108, meaning half the chip doesn’t air. “That’s golf,” as former CBS Golf lead producer Lance Barrow used to say.
No, the bigger issue seems to be the commercial itself. Did Rolex pay for this advertisement to run specifically during this section of the telecast, or was it merely a one-minute spot that needed to run sometime in the final hour or half-hour? If it’s the former, then it seems remarkably short-sighted of the NBC and PGA Tour sales teams to have agreed to these terms, given what we know about the 16th hole and its penchant for providing low scores and tournament-defining moments. If it’s the latter, it’s still short-sighted, because it places a commercial interruption during a stretch of play when the “winning moment” could be anywhere (and arrive at anytime).
All of this raises a larger, more existential question: Is the entertainment value of a thrilling finish not more vital to golf’s continued financial success than another commercial break? Said differently: Don’t be mad at NBC for missing Henley’s chip-in — ask why NBC needed to air a 61-second commercial in a moment of significance in the first place.
Golf’s business people will argue that you can have your cake (great golf) and eat it too (advertising dollars), but as golf grows richer, that vision grows more opaque. The margin of error for the NBC production team in navigating three golf shots and a one-minute commercial break was five seconds of analysis and one second of black. Meanwhile, the obligation facing the NBC production team was to feather 61 seconds of advertising between three contending golfers on two holes separated by a single shot. For those in the business of missing nothing, those are not particularly favorable numbers.
Nobody — not fans, NBC’s editorial team or the PGA Tour — is happy with the televised outcome of Henley’s chip, but it’s worth remembering why the possibility of this outcome exists. Golf on TV is ultimately a money-making entity, and for PGA Tour golf that costs upward of $700 million per year, commercial interruptions are how the money is made. The more of them, the larger the profit.
In other words, the real problem here isn’t an inept production but one overburdened by its commercial obligations. Real golf moments will continue to get squeezed from viewers in an environment where NBC is routinely expected to air 18 minutes per hour of commercials to satisfy its profit margins, and in turn pay the PGA Tour its chunk of the $700 million annual rights fee. Whether they’re tournament-deciding moments is anyone’s guess, including those employed to make the hard marriage of timing and obligation.
After the Henley slip-up, the headlines from NBC’s weekend at the Arnold Palmer Invitational will not be kind.
In golf now more than ever, that seems to be the cost of doing business.