Record PGA Tour score can’t help ratings

Jim Furyk set a PGA Tour record on Sunday, but unfortunately it didn’t get much TV love.

Furyk fired a record-low score of 58 in the final round of the Travelers Championship on Sunday, something that has never been accomplished on the PGA Tour. Yet it had no effect on TV ratings. Why? The round wasn’t event televised.

The golfer began the final round 16 shots out of the lead, meaning he teed off before 9 a.m. He wrapped up his round even before early coverage of the tournament began on Golf Channel.

And buzz surrounding the record round didn’t carry over to CBS’s coverage Sunday afternoon. The network averaged 1.4 million total viewers for the fourth round, according to Nielsen, less than half the 3.0 million it averaged last year.

CBS also posted a 0.9 household rating on Sunday, tying the event’s lowest final-round rating since at least 1998, according to Sports Media Watch.

The lows can of course be blamed on tough competition, largely from the Olympics on NBC and its related networks.

In other sports ratings:

- USA averaged 3.8 million total viewers for a NASCAR Sprint Cup race from Watkins Glen in New York on Sunday. That was down 4 percent from last year, not bad considering it, too, faced the Olympics.

That said, the race averaged 4.5 million viewers the last time it face the Olympics in 2012.

Tags: cbs, Golf Channel, jim furyk, nascar, olympics, pga tour, sports ratings, usa