Tiger Woods is still a needle mover, and it is a fact. He has had six back surgeries, and his appearances are less frequent than a meteor shower. Yet, lined-up fairways and six-foot-deep galleries at the Ritz Carlton Golf Club spoke of something special this 48-year-old man carries with him. That special something has also translated into something more tangible: TV ratings. This is something that has been bothering the Tour all year.

The 2024 PNC Championship received a massive boost from the Jupiter resident and his teenage son’s presence on the Orlando greens. With some help from the NFL lead-in. The first round was on tape delay on NBC after the Texans-Chiefs game. Saturday averaged 2.92 M viewers. It’s a record for the Parent-Child tournament at the Ritz Carlton Golf Club, and up 147% from last year.

The second day averaged 1.42M, per a Sports Media Watch report. Notably, the Sunday coverage was live on NBC. While there was no NFL lead-in this time, there were a handful of afternoon games. It might have played some role, but the fact that Team Woods was in contention drove eyeballs around the family event. An ace from Charlie Woods, marking his first, was a bonus.

Team Woods lost to the Langers in the playoffs. Charlie’s eagle putt kissed the lip but never embraced the hole. Bernhard Langer dropped the winning putt after an ingenious ‘drive’ from the fairway bunker. Nevertheless, there is little doubt who the crowd was cheering for. Back in 2021, Tiger Woods delivered for the PNC Championship. The live two-day coverage across NBC and Peacock was watched by 2.3M golf fans. For the PGA Tour, though, it’s good and bad news at the same time.

Why Tiger Woods can become a double-edged sword for the PGA Tour

Now, Tiger Woods might be the biggest needle mover, but you know the trouble with relying on the icon? You can’t really bank on him all the time. Woods recently underwent his sixth back surgery. That he walked the entire 36 holes is surely a positive sign, but the 15-time major champion himself admitted he had yet to be ‘tournament ready.’

Effectively, that means, even though Tiger Woods has signature event exemptions, he might not tee off in all of them. And even if he does and then underperforms, how frequently fans will tune in to watch Woods is a doubt. The 82-time PGA Tour winner was in the Genesis Invitational field last year. The first round still drew only 451k eyeballs, almost half of last year.

And the PGA Tour’s viewership graph is no less volatile than Nvidia’s chart on Nasdaq. A host of headline PGA Tour events have received paltry numbers. It has caught up with the players as well. Only months back, Rory McIlroy cautioned, “If you look at the TV ratings of the PGA Tour this year, they’re down 20 percent across the board.” The Ulsterman’s effort to offer something to fans—the Showdown—was a misfire.

A meager 625K viewers watched the ‘looks-like-scripted’ duel between PGA Tour and LIV across TNT and TBS. Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal shared that it’s comparable to the second-lowest numbers for ‘The Match.’ Amid this, the PNC Championship was definitely a shot in the arm. But at the same time, it appears that sans Tiger Woods, the Tour is likely to struggle.