Tiger Woods Fairy Tale Debunked in One Chart — Woods Not the “Needle Mover” You Have Been Led to Believe

Take a look at this chart from Sports Media Watch:

The Tiger Only golf media spin machine has been running in overdrive, trying to convince the world that the poor television ratings for this year’s Masters were caused by the absence of Tiger Woods. That a not-particularly popular player won in a boring runaway is not the reason, nor was the first spring weather after a miserably cold winter a factor.  Neither of those could possibly have caused people to leave their televisions and go outside. No, it was all due to Tiger Woods not playing. He moves the needle, don’t you know? There’s never been anything like him.

Well, actually, there has been.  In fact, golf has had far bigger needle movers.

That chart from Sports Media Watch spilled the beans.  Designed to show how horribly golf does without Tiger Woods, it actually shows the opposite.  We discover yet another lie upon which the Tiger Woods Fairy Tale has been built.

Consider the chart:

(1) The 17-year Jack Nicklaus Era from 1963 (Nicklaus’s first win) to 1979 actually has higher ratings than the 17-year Tiger Woods Era from 1997 (Woods’s first win) to 2013. Bet you Tiger Only fans didn’t know that, did you? It’s not at all what you’ve been told by the sports media, is it?  Turns out that not only was Jack Nicklaus a better player, but he brought more viewers to golf.

(2) Let’s be honest about Woods’s first Masters win, his highest-rated one: That event drew those ratings because it was presented in the general media as a political story: Little African American kid sticks it to the rich, white racists.  You can be sure Rachel Maddow and Al Sharpton watched golf for the first, and last, time that year.  Now, making a golf tournament about race and politics is a pretty dishonest and inflammatory way to cover golf — and it ignores the fact that Lee Elder played in the Masters 22 years earlier, and that the year Elder first played, there were eight(!) African American players on the PGA Tour — but sensationalism and conflict at the expense of truth is the way to sell advertising, isn’t it?

(3) If you toss out the two outliers in the Woods Era (1997 and 2001), the ratings are comparable to the period from 1979 to 1996, a period the Official Tiger Woods Narrative would have you think golf was dying.  Not the night and day difference the media preaches in their “Why Golf Needs Tiger Woods” sermons.

(4) The interest in Woods had been in pretty steep decline prior to the sex and PED scandals. The ratings for his 2005 win were pedestrian when you would have expected an exciting playoff to bring massive ratings. In fact 11 of the 17 Masters played in the Nicklaus Era had higher ratings than Tiger’s dramatic 2005 playoff win.  Think about that: The year of Woods’s playoff win over Chris DiMarco, the year of the iconic “Nike ball logo” chip-in, those ratings would have been in the bottom third of the ratings during the Nicklaus Era.  The bottom third!  That’s the Greatest Needle Mover of All Time?  Tiger Woods wins in a playoff and yet there were years in the 1980s when the ratings were higher.  Faldo had two “Dark Ages” wins that topped the Woods 2005 playoff win barnburner.  Mize topped it.  Tom Watson topped it.  Masters ratings in the 1980s regularly topped Woods’s iconic Nike Ball Logo playoff win.  Let that settle in.

(5) Woods’s sex and PED scandals of 2009 actually helped restore interest in him. Look at the steady ratings decline in the three preceding years, 2007-2009. In 2007, Woods was T-2, one shot back after the third round; he finished T-2, so he was very much the focus of the telecast. In 2008, Woods was in 5th after Saturday and finished in 2nd, so once again, he was the focus of the television coverage. In 2009, Woods finished T-6, four shots back, so he was in the hunt. Yet there was a slide which started from a mediocre level and descended even further. The scandal actually revived the ratings.

Now consider this: A regular Tour event in 1972 — the Pebble Beach Pro-Am drew a 13.1 Nielsen rating — would actually rank third-highest of all of the events in the Tiger Woods Era!  A regular Tour stop event beat all but two of Woods’s majors.  Think about that.

It’s important to remember that live sports ratings have not been affected by modern changes in technology.  Look at Super Bowl ratings, for example.  They have consistently been in the mid-40’s, with ups-and-downs dependent upon competitiveness of and interest in any given year’s game.