There are probably few things that Scottie Scheffler cares less about than how many people are watching him as he demonstrates his quiet mastery of golf, and yet our relative lack of enthusiasm for the game’s greatest active practitioner is a bit mystifying.
On Sunday, the 29-year-old secured his fourth major title with a victory at Royal Portrush that, at times, felt almost preordained. In a display of prowess that dispensed with the usual TV-friendly theatrics, Scheffler won the 153rd Open Championship by four strokes, making him the first worldwide No. 1 to claim the Claret Jug since Tiger Woods managed it in 2006.
According to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics data, approximately 6.1 million viewers watched as Scheffler closed out his round in the 1:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. ET quarter-hour, while NBC Sports’ coverage averaged 4.1 million viewers across the full telecast. While that’s a respectable turnout for an early afternoon of midsummer golf—deliveries across NBC, USA Network and Peacock were up 21% versus last year’s final round and marked the highest turnout since 4.72 million tuned in for the fourth day of the 2022 Open—the gains were made on the back of rather flimsy comps.
In 2024, the analogous round eked out just 3.39 million viewers, a nine-year low. Not since Zach Johnson’s rain-soaked win at St. Andrews in 2015 has the Open put up lower deliveries here in the States; staged on a Monday afternoon, the four-hole playoff averaged 2.85 million viewers. In other words, Scheffler’s drama-free finish served as more of a reset for NBC than a runaway ratings triumph.
Still, a win’s a win, even if Scheffler’s TV numbers aren’t in keeping with the level of his game. Four majors in and he’s yet to really draw a crowd that’s worthy of his outsized talents.
While Scheffler’s first major title gave CBS something of a leg up over the previous year, deliveries for the concluding stage of the 2022 Masters were resolutely unspectacular. Scheffler’s three-stroke win over Rory McIlroy averaged 10.2 million viewers, a figure that (understandably enough) would prove to be well shy of the 13 million the network served up earlier this spring with Wee Mac’s long-awaited Green Jacket grab.
Two years later, CBS’ Augusta audience slipped to 9.59 million viewers as Scheffler nailed down his second major with a four-stroke win over Ludvig Åberg. It wasn’t a nail-biter by any stretch of the imagination, but the 2024 Masters’ TV turnout was conspicuously watered down, especially in light of all the comparisons to Tiger Woods that began circulating as Scheffler thrust his arms into the famous blazer for a second time.
The Tiger talk resumed in earnest on Saturday, when NBC’s Jim “Bones” Mackay, who lugged Phil Mickelson’s clubs for 25 years, remarked, “I never thought I’d see a player as close to Tiger as this man currently is.” Scheffler would later dismiss any such comparisons, characterizing the praise as “a bit silly.”
If Scheffler’s dominance doesn’t exactly make for an unscheduled collapse onto the sports TV swooning couch—his five-stroke win in this year’s PGA Championship averaged 4.76 million viewers, down 4% from CBS’ previous number—that’s something that casual fans will have to figure out for themselves.
Yes, Scheffler often has the bearing of a man who’s suddenly been seized by the suspicion that he’s left the oven on, but the disconnect between his hangdog mien and all that lethal business he gets up to with his TaylorMades only makes him all the more compelling.
In an age where we probably know far too much about our favorite athletes, Scheffler is something of an enigma—a philosopher king with a masterful short game. During a pre-Open sit-down with reporters last week, Scheffler mused on the ephemeral nature of victory, wondering aloud at his own drive to collect trophies.
“It’s like showing up at the Masters every year; it’s like, why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly?” Scheffler said. “Why do I want to win the Open Championship so badly? I don’t know. Because if I win, it’s going to be awesome for two minutes.”
Not exactly “Win one for the Gipper,” but hey, these are questions worth asking.
Scheffler would go on to assess his relationship to the sport, suggesting that the path he’s taken isn’t all lollipops and bumblebees. “This is not a fulfilling life,” he said. “It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of, like, the deepest places of your heart. … All of the sudden you get to No. 1 in the world and it’s like, ‘What’s the point?’ And I really do believe that because, you know, what is the point?”
In the face of that revelation, Scheffler’s interlocutors indulged in a rolling chuckle. And Scheffler chuckled right along with them. The upshot was clear: If golf does not “fill the deepest wants and desires” of Scottie Scheffler’s heart, his little family does the trick.
Five days after saying that he’d “much rather be a great father than … a great golfer,” Scheffler celebrated his latest title with a little toddler slapstick, care of his 14-month-old son. According to Scheffler, Bennett is already swinging a club, although he mostly prefers to hit other kids with it.
