This Week In Golf Channel Ratings: Tiger, Big Numbers Return

After flashing 0.1's like it was going out of style, PGA Tour golf returned to very robust-for-cable sports numbers with last week's Northwestern Mutual Challenge and the presence of stars. Not to mention, awful weather in much of the country stranding viewers in front of beautiful images from Sherwood, fewer college football games to compete with and numerous NFL teams winding down lousy seasons.

Son of the Bronx posts the numbers, which says Golf Channel averaged 149,000 prime time viewers and 80,000 on average throughout the day, double over last year at this time when they averaged 70,000/42,000.

There was a tie at the top with Sunday's 2-hour block of pre-NBC coverage drawing a .4 and 540,000 viewers along with identical numbers for Saturday's bonus coverage from NBC when the telecast spilled over to GC. For some context, Thursday's telecast of the World Challenge drew a 0.2 and 241,000 viewers, higher than any fall 2013-14 PGA Tour events final rounds featuring FedExCup points and automatic spots in the Masters.

Shockingly, the two episodes of Grey Goose 19th Hole featuring Fay, Feinstein and yours truly ranked only 26th and 29th, drawing 80,000 and 77,000 viewers respectively. So much for Nielsen families working in LA-area Best Buys where each night I turned every television over to Golf Channel at 8:30 Pacific time.

And while the content was super, Architect's Week on Morning Drive was not exactly a ratings bonanza. But it's December. And Holly was not on enough (at all actually).