The golf world saw the Tiger effect on the 18th fairway on Sunday at East Lake, and it was reflected in TV ratings, too.
NBC Sports Group’s final round of the Tour Championship earned a 5.21 overnight rating, making it the highest-rated PGA Tour telecast of 2018 (excluding majors). Additionally, NBC announced that 18.4 million minutes of action were streamed on Sunday — its most-streamed non-major Sunday round ever.
The Sunday telecast was up 206 percent compared to 2017, when Woods wasn’t in the field.
Woods’s presence, and spot on the leaderboard, put the gallery in a frenzy Sunday evening. Thousands walked behind him up the 18th fairway before he closed his round and claimed PGA Tour victory No. 80.
“I could hear [them]; I just didn’t really see much,” Woods said. “I was kind of looking forward, and I figured that security would hold them back. When I got down to the golf ball, looked back, and I think the left half of the fairway was covered but not the right half. But the tournament wasn’t over yet. I still had a two-shot lead, but anything could still happen. I still needed to play the hole, and once I hit the ball into the bunker, I tried to miss it right of the flag. I was able to do that. And once I got the ball onto the green, then the tournament was over.”
