Open Championship Sees Significant Uptick In Ratings Despite 'Boring' Scottie Scheffler Coasting To Victory
Millions tuned into watch Scheffler display greatness.
Although the outcome was predetermined heading into Sunday's final round of The Open with Scottie Scheffler winning the Claret Jug, the inevitable did not keep golf fans from tuning into the action at Royal Portrush.
Scheffler began the final round with a four-shot cushion and immediately silenced any whispers of doubt by making birdie on the opening hole on Sunday. At various points throughout the day, he pushed his lead even further, but ultimately became the Champion Golfer of the Year with the same four-shot lead he began his final 18 holes with.
While it's fair to say that golf fans weren't exactly glued to every shot of Sunday's action with there not being any sort of drama around who was going to win the year's final major, they still watched in droves.
According to Josh Carpenter of the Sports Business Journal, NBC drew a little more than 4 million viewers during the final round. Those numbers included streaming figures as well as the tournament was streamed in various formats across Peacock.
Scottie Scheffler is the 2025 Champion Golfer of the Year. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)
Those 4 million some-odd viewers are a significant bump from the 3.390 million viewers who watched Xander Schauffele win The Open in 2024. The 4 million number is reportedly the best number seen for The Open since it was held at St. Andrews in 2022, when Cam Smith found the winner's circle.
Ratings only tell a part of the story, and don't exactly represent opinion, but these numbers don't necessarily add any support to the idea that Scottie Scheffler is boring to watch. What the numbers do tell, however, is that sports fans enjoy witnessing greatness, and the golf world has not seen this level of play at this type of consistent level since Tiger Woods' prime in the early 2000s.
Scheffler has won each of his four major championships by at least three shots and has been the No. 1 player in the world for 149 consecutive weeks. He last missed a cut in August 2022, and since then has won a total of 16 times.
Those are only three eye-opening facts about the run Scheffler has been on for the last three years as he continues to add to what feels like a never-ending list of impressive accomplishments just about every time he puts a tee in the ground.