There really seemed to be just one golf event fans were particularly excited about heading into December, with Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka taking part in The Showdown.
The Showdown appeared to have the potential to be a turning point in the game’s civil war. Had Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka put on a real show, those pushing for the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to come back together would have become louder than ever.
However, it proved to be an underwhelming matchup. Team PGA Tour won quite comfortably, with the LIV Golf pair looking extremely rusty. And it seems that it did fail to capture the imagination of fans, with just 625,000 watching The Showdown.
Why Tiger Woods playing at the PNC Championship managed to outshine The Showdown
Elsewhere, the PNC Championship this past week did deliver a brilliant finish, with Tiger Woods and Charlie Woods losing in a play-off to Bernhard Langer and Jason Langer. Obviously, the event is not the most prestigious on the calendar, but you would not have been able to tell Tiger Woods that coming down the stretch on Sunday.
And speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Ryan Lavner suggested the reason the event managed to connect with fans in a way in which The Showdown largely missed the mark.
“I’m going to be honest, Charlie and Tiger have played the PNC every year since 2020. Prior to 2020, I have never watched the PNC Championship, I never had any reason to do so. I wasn’t interested in it. This time of year, there’s a lot going on, a lot of other sports, I’m looking ahead to Kapalua, whatever the case may be. But ever since 2020, I have watched. And that leads me to a bigger topic in discussion of this format works. And this format, of the parent-child PNC Championship works because it either has to be really entertaining – which you could make the argument, that’s what Tiger and Charlie Woods bring on screen – and secondly, the format works because the participants care,” he said.
“Tiger, you mentioned, this is probably the happiest you’d ever seen him on the golf course. That back nine, at least from a viewer standpoint, it looked like he was trying to win a 16th major. He was absolutely dialled in and intense. In the grand scheme of things, does it matter who wins the PNC Championship? Of course not. But it mattered deeply to the Woods family, to Tiger, to Charlie, to Sam, to Elin. It all mattered to them and that brought a level of intensity. That is why The Showdown did not work. 625,000 people, according to our friend Josh Carpenter, watched The Showdown last week. That does not work, that does not work at all.”
Where Scottie Scheffler continues to trail Tiger Woods by some distance
Of course, it remains to be seen what the viewing figures were for the PNC Championship. But Lavner is not going to be alone in his view that the tournament was much more compelling than The Showdown.
Certainly, it seemed that a win alongside his son would have meant a lot more to Tiger Woods than a victory in The Showdown meant to either McIlroy or Scheffler.
But it also perhaps acts as a reminder of how important Woods remains to the game. Woods is apparently one of just three players who moves the needle when it comes to ratings in the modern game. And many would have been a lot more interested in seeing whether he could win on Sunday than they would have been in seeing who triumphed in a large number of PGA Tour events this year.
It is alarming if Scheffler, McIlroy and DeChambeau cannot inspire fans to switch on in their droves, particularly when watching Tiger Woods – who remains well short of 100 percent – take part in a scramble event seems to be so compelling.
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