Blades Brown, Kris Kim & Others Are Shining but Is It Causing Jay Monahan a Headache?

Add Blades Brown to the lists of Kris Kim and Miles Russell. Brown became the second teenager in two weeks to make the cut at a PGA Tour event. Last week, Kim, the son of a former LPGA Tour Pro, bagged a solo 65. A week prior, Russell became the youngest player to make the cut at a Korn Ferry Tour event. 

If you look at the leaderboard since the Sentry, this season looks to be the year of the improbable. Longshots have dominated the leaderboard. The trouble was that without leading stars at the top, casual fans dropped off. And there is no reason to believe that teenagers can change that either. 

Rising stars haven’t filled the viewership kitty of the PGA Tour

Matthieu Pavon. Chris Kirk. Jake Knapp. Everyone has a great story in the run-up to their PGA Tour triumph. Pavon was the first French winner on the Tour since World War II. Knapp was until recently moonlighting as a bouncer in a club to keep his golf hopes alive. Kirk’s story has been a bounceback from the darker times. 

But the linear TV ratings kept declining without established stars. Sports Business Journal reported that through ten events, Golf Channel’s viewership for the final two rounds was down 18%, and NBC’s was down 16%. If one reason was losing big names due to LIV Golf, the other has been the remaining stars’ relatively poor show. 

There is a void, whichever way you see it. There is a void on top of the leaderboard due to the omission of names like Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, and Patrick Cantlay. Blades Browns and Kris Kims are great. But they can’t pull in casual fans like a playoff between Cantlay and Bryson DeChambeau in the 2021 BMW Championship. 

Even with Scottie Scheffler’s dominance of late, it has been harder to find the lost audience. THE PLAYERS had Xander Schauffele, Scottie Scheffler, and Wyndham Clark racing toward the top; the ratings evinced that the Sunday round showed a 15% drop. The broader undercurrent also shows that the PGA Tour needs to find a quick fix to bring back casual fans and core viewers. 

Why has viewership dwindled in almost every event?

With signature events on the calendar, it has been harder to witness all the big names playing more often. Secondly, even when they did, commercials took away a chunk of the coverage. It has been a headache for the fans. Look at the backlash the tour faced in the Sentry, its 2024 season opener. The scenario hasn’t changed much since. On top of that, Jay Monahan & Co. have also faced Mother Nature’s wrath almost every week, most vehemently at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. 

So, Blades Brown, Kris Kim, and Miles Russell need time to first earn their PGA Tour cards. Whereas, Nick Dunlap needs time to settle down on the Tour. Dunlap’s best show is a T11 at the Valero Texas Open. First, the stars need to shine. The narrative would have been completely different if Kirk, Pavon, and Knapp had bested the pack of McIlroy, Schauffele, Cantlay, and Morikawa on their way to the top.