U.S. Women's Open, Memorial 2021 Ratings About What You'd Expect When Two Great Tournaments Collide

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Two of the biggest non-men’s majors went up against each other last week and as they will in the foreseeable future unless schedulers push for change. Still, with nearly matching TV windows and the conclusions happening in annoying congruity, it’s not a shock to see CBS’s 2021 Memorial broadcast and NBC/Golf Channel’s U.S. Women’s Open delivered smaller audiences than hoped-for.

Add on the an NBA Game 7, Tiger’s absence and the Memorial hit a three-year low according to Sports Media Watch’s Paulsen.

Final round coverage of the PGA Tour Memorial tournament averaged 2.82 million viewers on CBS last Sunday, marking the tournament’s smallest final round audience in three years (2.35M). Viewership fell 12% from last year, when the tournament marked Tiger Woods’ return from hiatus (3.28M), and 5% from 2019 — when Woods finished in the top ten (2.96M).

I suppose you could say the rating was pretty great all things considered, but with the previous day’s Rahm/COVID news, more were likely tuning in.

The U.S. Women’s Open went off split tees and played threesomes to fit NBC’s priority status for gymnastics given how it’s an Olympic year.

While the U.S. Women’s Open audience was up from some dismal showings in 2019 and 2020, this is still not a great number given an exciting finish, major start in Lexi Thompson leading and an ad-free telecast.