The move to a Monday finish for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions resulted in the most-watched final round of the event since 2008, the Golf Channel said.
Steve Stricker’s three-shot victory at Kapalua in the first PGA Tour event of 2012 earned a household rating of 0.6 with an average of 659,000 viewers watching at any given time, according to preliminary data released by Nielsen Research.
The four-day average for the tournament was 609,000 viewers, which a Golf Channel spokesman said was also was the best for the event since 2008.
The Golf Channel will begin four days of live coverage of the Sony Open today at 2 p.m.
PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who hadn’t yet seen the Monday numbers Wednesday said he was encouraged by the viewership, which came amid the change from the traditional Thursday-Sunday run to a Friday-Monday format. “Everybody was very pleased about the level of the television audience on Friday, I know that much,” Finchem said.
The Golf Channel said Friday’s numbers — a 0.7 household rating/705,000 average viewers — were up 27 percent over those of 2011, the previous best, and more than 50 percent better than any previous opening round of the event since the Golf Channel began showing it in 2007.
Finchem told reporters at the Sony Open on Wednesday that he likes where the two Hawaii events are positioned at the beginning of the PGA Tour schedule, but added, “We’re going to look at other options, too.”
Finchem said, “I don’t want to rule out other ways. We’re gonna see about whether or not we’re going to move forward with the way we structure the end of the season in a couple months. Then, we’ll spend some more energy thinking about whether we want to make schedule changes.”
Finchem, 64, said a four-year extension of his contract, announced Wednesday, will take him through 2016 and might be his last. Finchem has headed the PGA Tour since 1994.
He recently guided the PGA Tour to nine-year extensions of its TV deals with CBS Corp. and Comcast Corp.’s NBC through 2021.
Finchem received a reported $4.7 million salary and benefits package in 2009.
