I'd imagine a good chunk of viewers they got was from people who oppose it but just wanted to have a look out of curiosity. Bit like how I switched on GB News when it first aired.
Going to give my take on it.
I was all for more competition if not for the bloody Saudi’s who was behind this. If this was run by some decent corporation I would surely be lending my support. Anyway my take on the first inaugural competition.
In short, it’s awful.
TV - I felt like watching golf with WWE over the top commentary. Every sentence the commentators said had included a “fun” word in this. “This was so much fun”. “The players were having so much fun”. “The fans were having so much fun in the last few days”. Bloody hell, it’s either they had a limited vocabulary or they knew there wasn’t much else to it. There definitely wasn’t excitement because I don’t know what they stand to win from the competition apart from the money. Its not like they just beat the top 20 players of the world to claim victory.
Everything is fucking neon in colour. The studio, the leaderboard and logos. It’s college football, NASCAR type of graphics and it was very distracting. There was just a single camera work so it felt one dimensional all round. Maybe the Saudis paid the players too much and forgot to leave some money for tv production
The competition - 18 holes short gun start with no cut. It can be exciting but I think no one had a clue how other than to jizz over Phil Mickelson’s iron shots that sailed 20 yards past the hole and called him the greatest player ever to grace the game. It didn’t help that marquee players were already given large sums of money before the competition even started so it’s more more like an exhibition to me.
The course - maybe TV just didn’t do justice to it. Centurion club felt cheap that looked more worthy of society golf competition than a proper tour sanctioned event. Marquees and grandstands appeared like empty shoe boxes placed around the course just for the sake of it.
It’s not looking good on and off the course. With Bryson, Kevin Na and Patrick Reed joining maybe we can expect an improvement but they have a lot of work to do if they were to sustain my interest.