Why Golf Needs a FedEx Cup Playoff Event on the West Coast

This week the PGA Tour will return to Torrey Pines, site of one of the most exciting U.S. Opens in modern history and the event that really put prime-time golf on the map.

Tiger Woods’ attempt to overcome this picturesque coastal gem, Rocco Mediate and a broken leg in 2008 drew an incredible 12.1 million viewers to their television sets during the final round, which was televised in prime time on the East Coast.

It was initially thought this perfect combination of golf’s biggest star, the drama surrounding his injury and the underdog story in Mediate all set on one of golf’s most aesthetic backdrops was a once-off ratings bonanza.

But that has been proven not to be the case.

The USGA has taken its national championship to the West Coast three more times since 2008, and while it has been unable to replicate the viewership numbers of that year, each subsequent West Coast Open has provided a considerable boost in the television ratings.

The 2010 U.S. Open, which was won by Graeme McDowell at Pebble Beach, drew a final-round overnight rating of 6.9. This was significantly higher than the 2009 final-round rating of 5.1 despite both Woods and Phil Mickelson in contention late into Sunday evening at Bethpage.

The Open headed back to the West Coast in 2012 when it was held at the Olympic Club in San Francisco and once again televised during prime time on the East Coast.

As expected, Webb Simpson’s 2012 U.S. Open drew higher ratings than the 2011 U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club, which wound up being a runaway win for Rory McIlroy.

But, surprisingly, the 2012 final-round rating of 6.6 (9.6 million viewers), was also considerably higher than the 2013 U.S. Open (5.4 overnight rating) where Mickelson was right on the verge of capturing that elusive U.S. Open title at the historic Merion Golf Club in Pennsylvania before finally losing out to Justin Rose on the last two holes.

Eric Risberg/Associated Press

There is nothing that could possibly explain why a drama-filled 2013 U.S. Open with a star-studded leaderboard was trumped in the ratings by Simpson’s win at the Olympic Club in 2012, other than that Simpson’s win was televised during prime time on the East Coast.

The 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay in Washington was also televised during prime time back East. The ratings for this event were lower than any of the other recent West Coast Opens (4.2 final-round overnight rating), but were still higher than Martin Kaymer’s eight-stroke victory in 2014 (3.3 final-round rating) and Dustin Johnson’s first major championship title at Oakmont in 2016 (3.4 final-round rating).

With four West Coast Opens in the past nine years and two more scheduled during the next five, the USGA has clearly caught on to the benefits of prime-time golf.

But despite all of the success the USGA has had out west, the PGA Tour has been reluctant to follow suit.

In fact, the PGA Tour will leave the West Coast on February 19 following the Genesis Open at Riviera and not return for the entire remainder of the season.

This seems like a real missed opportunity, particularly with regards to its flagship FedEx Cup playoff events. Three of the four FedEx Cup playoff events are held on the East Coast, and the tour has never travelled west of Colorado for its season-ending playoff series.

By holding virtually all of its playoff events in the same region of the country, the tour is limiting its in-person fanbase while also being forced to televise all of its events during the afternoon hours on the East Coast.

This of course puts it into a head-to-head television matchup with the ratings behemoth that is the NFL at the worst possible time of the year.

September is still the honeymoon period for most NFL fans. All games are important, and no team has been completely eliminated from the playoffs yet.

The final round of the 2016 Tour Championship drew an overnight rating of just 1.9 with a mere 3 million total viewers tuning in, and this is actually up substantially from the previous two years.

East Lake Golf Club, which hosts the Tour Championship each year, is certainly a strong test of golf and is an event that is well-supported by fans, sponsors and the local community.

It is also rich in history being that it is where Atlanta native Bobby Jones first learned to play the game.

John Amis/Associated Press

But East Lake is also a fairly uninteresting venue with regards to its broadcasting appeal, even with the front and back nine swapped for the 2016 event.

So for what the Tour would have to consider its second-most important event of the season behind only the Players Championship, it has decided to hold it in direct competition with the NFL at a venue that is not overly appealing to a television audience.

It is no wonder this Super Bowl of golf that the PGA Tour had hoped the Tour Championship would one day evolve into has never come to fruition.

For the PGA Tour to make its season finale exponentially more interesting, it doesn’t need to touch the point system, field size or tournament format. It simply needs to take advantage of something the USGA discovered nearly a decade ago: prime-time West Coast golf.

Move the Tour Championship to more picturesque West Coast venue and televise the final two rounds during prime time on a Tuesday and Wednesday night.

Who ever said all golf tournaments need to finish on a Sunday?

Attempting to go head-to-head with the NFL has been a futile exercise for virtually every other sport, let alone a somewhat fringe sport such as golf.

Why not start the Tour Championship on a Sunday so only the early rounds are competing with the NFL, and then finish it off in prime-time on Tuesday and Wednesday night when there is very little in the way of sports competition on television?

Now this is not to say the city of Atlanta or even East Lake Golf Club do not deserve a PGA Tour event, because they do. East Lake would be a suitable venue for a midseason PGA Tour event or even one of the early-round playoff events, just not the Tour Championship.

The tour can do better for an event of this magnitude.

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The top players in the world battling it out for $10 million in prime time at a well-known visually aesthetic venue such as a Pebble Beach or Torrey Pines would almost certainly create a far more entertaining FedEx Cup finale.

And at the end of the day, professional golf, like any other sport, is just a form of entertainment.

Back in 1851 during the heart of the California Gold Rush, John B.L. Soule famously wrote “Go West, young man, go West” in an editorial for the Terre Haute Express (a phrase later used by Horace Greely). If the PGA Tour has any desire to find broadcasting gold and inject some much-needed life back into the Tour Championship, it would be wise to take Soule’s advice and head west.