Tiger and NBC outshines NCAA hoops on Sunday

The best shot of the weekend wasn’t on the basketball court.

While the last two tickets were being punched on the Road to the Final Four it was impossible not to watch golf over basketball on Sunday.

Tiger Woods drained a 16 foot birdie putt at 7:48p.m. on the 72nd hole to complete a five stroke come from behind win over Sean O’Hair capturing his 6th Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Country Club in Orlando. It was vintage Tiger as the ball dropped into the cup the flashbulbs went off – it was golf’s version of The Natural.

For over almost six hours Sunday Producer Tommy Roy led the NBC Sports golf team of Dan Hicks, Johnny Miller, Gary Koch, Dottie Pepper, Roger Maltbie, Mark Rolfing and Jimmy Roberts as they did an outstanding job of not over hyping Tiger’s march from 5 shots back to overtake Sean O’Hair and win on the final hole no less.

After watching the NBC coverage at Bay Hill it is clear they are the gold standard of golf broadcasting. They did not miss a thing and Hicks, Miller and the entire crew were spot on as they followed Tiger’s up and down roller coaster ride to victory.

Miller was great as he both praised and second guessed Tiger’s shots. He has been panned by some for his second guessing of the golfers. But not only was Miller right most of the time when he was wrong he was the first to call himself out on his misstep always with humor and some good natured back and forth with Hicks.

Koch who is under rated as an analyst was clearly on his game following Tiger’s march on the back nine while both Pepper and Maltbie gave great insight on where the ball was both for Tiger’s two key bunker shots as well as O’Hair’s plunge in the water on the 17th hole.

Roy’s production team had all the best reaction shots from both Tiger and O’Hair. They also had some great shots from the sand traps as well as the water. In short they had everything covered from tee to green all six hours.

So as the sun sat on Orlando the NBC Sports crew had to feel good about Sunday afternoon’s telecast.

Rating’s wise it was no surprise that right around the time the NCAA hoops were over the numbers went higher. They peaked at a 7.8/13 from 7:30-8 p.m. ET as Tiger secured his first PGA win since last year’s historic U.S. Open victory.

The Arnold Palmer Invitational was a ratings winner for NBC Sports outperforming two of last year’s major championships: 48 percent higher than the final round of the British Open (3.3) and 75 percent greater than the final round of the PGA Championship (2.8).

Here are the top 10 Market’s for Sunday’s telecast.

1. Fort Myers, 11.6/20

2. Orlando, 10.6/20

3. West Palm Beach, 8.8/15

4. Tampa, 7.6/15

5. Providence, 7.4/12

6. Buffalo, 7.1/13

7 Milwaukee, 6.9/13

T8. Minneapolis, 6.4/14

T8. Baltimore, 6.4/11

10. Cleveland, 6.1/11

Big win on the web.

PGATOUR.COM, the online home of the PGA TOUR, was also a big winner. Tiger Woods’ second consecutive win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational gave the site an 26% increase in visits to more than 3 million and a 24% increase in average daily unique users (543K) year over year versus the same four day event in 2008. In addition, for all four days of tournament coverage video streams increased 333% to 4.7 million and page views increased 60% to more than 64 million.