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The Genesis Invitational was slated to take place from February 22 to 24, 2024. The television coverage of the Sunday round was split between Golf Channel and CBS from 1-3 pm ET and 3-6:30 pm ET respectively.
According to recent reports, ratings for the Sunday round television coverage fell 5% from the previous year, when Jon Rahm took home the victory. The overall number of viewers for the final round of 2024 was 3.2 million, whereas the total number of viewers for the final round of 2023 was 3.4 million.
NUCLR Golf took to X (formerly Twitter) and shared:
“#TVNUMBERS — Genesis Invitational ratings on Sunday were down 5% from last year (3.2M vs. 3.4M in ‘23) per @JoshACarpenter”
It is worth noting that the opening round of the Genesis Invitational, which included both Tiger Woods and Jordan Speith, did not perform well either in terms of television ratings. They received just 450,000 viewers, a significant decrease of about 51% from 2023.
Later, both of these golfers were off the field. Woods withdrew himself owing to illness and Spieth got disqualified due to wrong score marking. Additionally, the event host, Woods, was not present on site for the final day of the Genesis Invitational to hand over the trophy to the winner.
The PGA Tour faced some similar issues earlier this month as well. During the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the play was delayed because of unfavorable weather conditions, focusing coverage on the LIV Mayakoba event, which drew an impressive 432,000 viewers.
Nonetheless, when CBS aired the replay of the Pebble Beach third round, things swiftly turned in favor of the PGA Tour again.
A look into The Genesis Invitational Sunday round
The fourth and final day of The Genesis Invitational concluded on Sunday (February 18). Patrick Cantlay was ahead with his impressive score after 56 holes with a two-stroke margin on the leaderboard.
However, the American professional golfer fell short on the last day of the Genesis Invitational and ended the round at 1 over par. This made him finish the event at 13 under par and secure the T4 spot alongside Adam Hadwin and Xander Schauffele.
This also gave enough chances for Hideki Matsuyama to reach the top of the leaderboard. He finished the round on 9 under par after hitting consecutive birdies on 1-3 holes, 10-12 holes and then 15-17 holes.
The Japanese professional golfer concluded his event with a total score of 17 under par to win $4,000,000 cash prize and 700 FedEx Cup points.
After the win, Hideki Matsuyama opened up about how his back injury made it difficult for him to reach the top-10 spot for quite some time. He said (via CNN):
“After my eighth win, I’d been struggling with my back injury. There were a lot of times where I felt I was never going to win again. I struggled reaching to top-10, but I’m really happy that I was able to win today.
Following Matsuyama, Luke List and Will Zalatoris stood in the T2 position by scoring a total of 14 under par at the Riviera Country Club. They were just three strokes behind on the leaderboard.
