A ‘true disaster’! That is what the fans dubbed the recently ended Procore Championship. The reason? It attracted just 69,000 people for the Sunday round, a smaller number when compared to the figures the LIV Golf League managed to garner due to Jon Rahm’s win in Chicago. But despite the small victory, the Greg Norman-led circuit failed to earn the acknowledgment of LIV Golf critic, Brandel Chamblee.

“LIV remains in the witness protection program of sports viewership,” wrote Chamblee as he added, “Partly because they are trying to “scale” the county-fair motleyness of the 16th hole at the WM Phoenix Open and the Seve-like passion of the RyderCup.” That’s not all. The commentator of the sport also pointed out how they failed to succeed owing to two reasons; “They fail, not least for the lack of innovation of their ideas but also for the origin of their investment.”

He was, interestingly enough, responding to a tweet made by Josh Carpenter, a reporter for the Sports Business Journal. The journalist had earlier shared a report on how the viewership for Jon Rahm clinching the Individual Champion title in Chicago reached 134,000 during the second round on Saturday and 89,000 on Sunday.

This does seem like quite a win, albeit a small one when compared with the 69,000 from the Procore Championship. A fan hinted at the same as they responded to Chamblee’s recent tweet: “Bud the PGA can barely get 300k viewers on National TV.” His response? “It depends on the event.”

Sure, his reply makes sense. For the 2024 TOUR Championship, as many as 2.7 million people tuned in to watch Scottie Scheffler claim the FedEx Cup title for himself. But the LIV Golf critic didn’t stop there. He went on to draw a parallel between the Saudi-backed circuit, which Rahm is a part of, and the PGA Tour, all while bashing the former (obviously!).

Chamblee’s response to Jon Rahm’s win at Chicago one-upping the PGA Tour

“To be sure viewership is down,” added Chamblee, “But overall the image of the PGA Tour is still about charity and merit.” The 62-year-old then pointed out that this is why the Jay Monahan-led circuit remains such a strong commercial property. Although he did agree that innovation is coming to golf one way or another, the ex-pro made sure to highlight how the PGA Tour “has the most sought after demographic in all of sport.”

The Tour’s recent figures can be attributed to a number of reasons, the Solheim Cup being the most vital one. The biennial event, interestingly, averaged a viewership of 657,000 on the NBC Network on Sunday. That sure does seem like quite a huge number when compared to the 69,000, right? Anyhow, keeping all of that aside, the PGA Tour will surely be hoping more people will tune in for the rest of the Fall events.