I’m a big fan of watching the game’s best. That might be underselling it, actually. I’ve long been that guy who watches Sunday of the Barracuda Championship after having already watched the Open Championship for six hours.
My childhood was timestamped not just by Tiger’s major victories but by other moments in his career. There has always been a certain comfort to the golf calendar. Starting in Hawaii while most of the country watches from the depths of winter; the West Coast swing of familiar venues like Riviera, Pebble Beach, TPC Scottsdale and Torrey Pines; the Florida swing with my childhood hometown Honda Classic (it’s now named something different, which I refuse to acknowledge), the Players Championship, the Arnold Palmer Invitational; little gifts along the way like Harbour Town, Colonial and Muirfield Village, and, of course, the major season with its peaks.
I’m a PGA Tour nerd. There is something calming about watching golf. As much as I enjoy watching other sports (mainly hockey and football), a great golf tournament with memorable characters is perfection for me. There is something intoxicating about the anticipation of a final round followed by the rapid fire of big moments happening so quickly. I love watching golf.
That’s why I was surprised when my golf watching time dropped drastically in 2024. It wasn’t a conscious decision. It’s not like I had a kid or saw my leisure time cut down—if anything, I had more free time than ever. Still, I watched a lot less pro golf.
My guess is that I watched about 70-80 percent less golf in 2024. The year is not over, of course, but I’m not expecting the FedEx Cup and Presidents Cup to change my trend.
I watched all four majors closely and I caught most of the Players Championship. I attended a LIV event in Nashville but otherwise didn’t watch any other of that league’s tournaments.
But digging back through the golf calendar, I’m realizing I barely watched (or completely missed) most tournaments.
Outside of the big events, I formed a similar relationship to golf as I have to baseball. I would describe myself as a casual baseball fan. I adore going to games and occasionally flip on a game on TV if it’s a lazy Sunday afternoon. I’ll follow scores on my phone and check the standings each week. But I lose interest quickly if my team, the Toronto Blue Jays, is bad (they are terrible, if you are wondering).
Golf has largely become that for me. Rather than watching the events on TV, I find myself glancing at leaderboards, listening to podcasts and scrolling X (Twitter).
It appears I’m not alone in this, given how golf TV ratings are decidedly mediocre.
I’ve been doing some reflecting on why this happened. Here is my personal ranking of why my golf watching was down in 2024.
1. My tolerance for commercials is decreasing rapidly
I wrote about this earlier in the year but golf on TV is a slog of commercials, and my patience for ads continues to dwindle as I get older.
One part of hockey’s TV product I love is how fast-paced and structured it is. There are three TV timeouts per period. You know when they are coming and they are only long enough to go to the bathroom and grab a drink. The intermissions are 18 minutes long, enough time to take my dog for a walk. You know the exact time investment going into it.
Golf is already a slower sport … but then you add in random commercial breaks … and everything becomes choppy and disjointed. I can get emotionally invested for 15 minutes and then my attention gets pulled to something else that is more captivating.
This is also frustrating on the gambling side. I’m not a huge gambler,= but I’m in a season-long pool where you pick two golfers for each event. It’s tough to watch the guys I picked unless they are at the top of the leaderboard. The main telecast might not even show them at all. You gamble to watch what you gambled on, right?
And think about it: golf is going up against all entertainment products. That includes other sports but it also includes Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+ and every other streaming service with no commercials. And it’s also going up against spending the day at the beach or reading a book or being with your friends at a brewery.
I found myself choosing those other options more because …
2. The golf itself is less captivating
This isn’t just me, right? Just checking.
Obviously, the Tour has battled its warts when it comes to creating an entertaining product—that happens when you water it down with too many events—but now the game’s best are split into two different places. On top of that, the Tour itself has essentially created two tiers. The second-tier events usually have players I’m only vaguely familiar with so it might as well be a Korn Ferry tournament.
Most of the players who drove a lot of controversy on the Tour are now on LIV. Even if some of them aren’t great players at this point, they served as villains or entertainers.
I’m fine with players making a lot of money. I don’t really care how much money they make. But now it feels like Tour and LIV events are just cash-funneling systems for players. It feels transactional and stale.
We watch sports to see incredible athletes who care deeply about their craft—and that is one of the reasons I thought the Olympic golf worked—but it seems like a lot of that passion has eroded. Whether this is true in reality, I think there is fan fatigue on my end, particularly as we’ve been entrenched in so much political/business talk within the game these past few years.
That leads me into my third point which is inherently connected to this one.
3. Who are you supposed to root for (and against)?
I grew up watching Tiger so that was an easy sell. You watch to see Tiger overcome a challenger to win.
Tiger is (pretty much) gone as a competitor, but there are other guys who have inspired people to watch for one reason or another. I’m just not seeing a lot of them right now.
How many players would make you sit down and watch their entire round? I’m not sure I have anyone on my list. As recently as a couple of years ago, I was invested in tracking Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth. If they were playing, I wanted to watch.
I’ve lost interest in them as protagonists. McIlroy’s major drought is frustrating and Spieth hasn’t been a reliable contender for a few years now.
Bryson DeChambeau is the most interesting player right now, but even his schtick can come across as calculated PR maneuvering. I will take that, though. We need a lot more players with different personalities rather than some of the monotone robots coming out on Tour.
I appreciate Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele but they both need antagonists like Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed. There needs to be more reasons to be emotionally invested.
I’m in on the majors because there is history and legacy at stake. Everything else is meant to be entertaining and I’m not being entertained as much as I used to be.
4. I want to play more golf rather than watching it
This one is straightforward but worth a mention.
Golf’s popularity is up since COVID-19. Courses are packed. A lot of the hardcore golf audience is on the course during the weekend rather than watching the Byron Nelson Classic.
I’ve made it a point to play more golf in 2024 so I’m moving some of my golf watching time over to on-course time.
5. Some of my golf consumption has transferred to YouTube
At the same time my pro golf watching has decreased, my YouTube golf watching has slightly increased.
There is a limit to how much YouTube golf I will watch but it does have some advantages over the Tour. For one, it’s on-demand with the option to avoid ads. For another, everything is catered to entertainment and making the game fun to watch.
I wrote earlier in the year about my favorite channels, including what DeChambeau has been doing in recent months. It’s not necessarily a replacement for tournament golf but I find myself looking for new videos from my favorite channels. Inevitably, that cuts into the pro golf watching time.
6. I’m searching more for experiences instead of passive entertainment
My last point here fits into a larger discussion about how younger people (if a millennial like myself can still call myself young) decide to spend their time.
Most of my disposable income/time goes towards experiences. That includes travel and trying new activities.
I’m still interested in passive entertainment but I’m using that time more on other sports, social media, watching TV shows/movies, etc.
I’ve leaned harder into the experience/activity bucket as time goes on because it’s more enjoyable for me. In the process, watching golf has been less of a priority.
Those are my six primary reasons for why 2024 was a year where I didn’t watch as much pro golf.
Perhaps there will be changes in the future—I’m certainly open to watching more if some of these variables flip.
Has your pro golf consumption been down this year? Why or why not?
Let me know below in the comments.
Top Photo Caption: As golf’s divide continues, TV ratings continue to flounder. (GETTY IMAGES/Keyur Khamar)
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