After another year of watching this event, sponsored by Dell Technologies this year, I am still of the opinion that as a TV event, like its final match, it's a flop.
Here's why. The Ryder Cup is the most compelling 3 days of golf television in the game, and of course it's match play, which is far more compelling than stroke play because every shot, every hole means something.
However the crucial difference is the Ryder Cup is a team game for your country, with all the history of David (Europe) overcoming Goliath (USA) that like a great soap, has captured the golfing world.
This WGC event had a week of sensational play, but it's like watching a great horse race with no money on your favourite. You just watch the beautiful horses parade in the paddock, then watch the race with interest but no passion.
Now the minute you put $100.00 on the #5, you are down by the rail screaming for it to cross the finish line first !
I think the technical coverage is a good as it can get with 32 matches on the go on Wednesday making it impossible to do anything but cherry pick, the storylines for each match became better as the number of matches declines to 4, then 2, we can follow the story of each more closely.
Having Jim Bones McKay, David Feherty and Roger Maltby out on course with pairings is the way to go, it gave us a break from the in studio crew watching, like us, on TV. They are good for relaying interesting tidbits provided by the production team, but are just sterile at best.
I never want to hear Steve Sands or Jimmy Roberts commenting while watching TV for a whole week again. Please use them to go out and do features of interest regarding guys like Aphibarnrat, or Sharma that nobody in the USA knows anything about.
Sadly as been the case in this event many times, when there was at least one compelling finalist in Bubba, and all the lights came on one match, it was a flop since Kisner just got creamed.
1999 Jeff Maggert beat Andrew Magee, 2001 Steve Stricker beat Pierre Fulke, 2002 Kevin Sutherland beat Scott McCarron all in front of less people than watch 5 pin bowling.
Tiger arrived to save it in 2003 and 2004 then in 2008, but the event can't just rely on him for ratings.
Under the WGC rules of inviting the top 64 players I'm not sure what the solution is to be honest.
However I would scrap the WGC title and make it the World Team Match Play Championship with 2 players representing their country, seeded, like the old days. Imagine a USA vs Spain final.
Now you'd get the passion back in it.
Bryan Angus
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