Welcome to Issue #29
“A bad attitude is worse than a bad swing.”
Payne Stewart
What’s on my mind this week
Higgo calls time with his caddy, Adam Scott showing major consistency with 100th consecutive major appearance, Bryson questions the moon landing, The English Open is back on the calendar, Aaron Rai is the people’s champion, the Korn Ferry Tour publishing pace of play stats by player is either very brave or very overdue, Marco Penge stepping away from golf for health reasons - wishing him well, McLaren clubs now available through Club Champion fittings (still waiting on my complimentary set)
In the news
Why it matters: The 2026 PGA Championship final round averaged 5.76 million viewers on CBS, up 21% on last year, with the third round also hitting multi-year highs and ESPN coverage up 49% across four days, continuing the broader trend of CBS posting its largest golf audience since 2015.
Our Take: The headline numbers are real, but the underlying comparability is uncertain. This was the first PGA Championship measured under Nielsen's new methodology combining smart-TV and set-top-box data with the traditional panel, and the household rating rose by more than viewership did, which suggests measurement change is doing some of the work. The second confound is competitive. The PGA Championship faced zero NBA playoff competition on Sunday for the first time since 2023, after going up against Game 7s in each of the previous two years. Stripping out those two effects, the underlying growth is harder to quantify than the press release version suggests. The ESPN gains across four separate windows (up 40-61% on individual days) are the most analytically interesting part of the data, because they hold across multiple programmes and platforms in a way that's harder to explain through methodology alone. For rights holders heading into the next negotiation cycle, the question is whether golf's media resurgence survives next year's PGA Championship against an NBA Game 7 and a stabilised measurement system. The bull case for golf as a media asset rests on the answer.