How Much Trouble Is Golf In?

We might be about to find out

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The Masters usually answers a few questions in golf, but only a few. The course at Augusta National is so particular that champions have often emerged who, it turns out, had games – or histories at the event – that were perfectly suited for the April weekend but didn’t foretell much about their seasons to come.

It’s a little odd, then, to hear that the year’s first major is being used this week as a temperature-taker on the entire future of golf on TV. But that’s where we are here in 2024.

The Masters arrives this year at a sort of early confluence of issues. Among other things, the tournament goes off Thursday amid a golf ratings slump, with early-season viewership down about 20 percent across the board.

There are explanations for that, including lousy weather that hit several tournaments and forced the cancellation of the final round at Pebble Beach altogether. It hasn’t helped that several PGA events have lacked a little star power in their final rounds.

But the bigger picture is that the current state of golf is weird. And the Masters may tell us just how severely that weirdness is affecting the bottom line.