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If Tiger's on, they will watch Woods' British win brings more record TV ratings
NEW YORK (AP) -- Tiger Woods keeps turning in record-breaking performances and people keep tuning in to watch. His victory at the British Open drew the highest preliminary TV ratings for the tournament since at least 1989 -- and, according to ABC Sports' estimates, the largest number of viewers ever for the event. ABC's telecast of the final round Sunday drew a big-market overnight rating of 7.5 with a 21 share. That represents a 32 percent increase over last year's 5.7/14, which was boosted by a three-man playoff to determine the champion and had been the highest overnight mark in the previous 10 years. ABC does not have overnight numbers from before 1989. The Sunday rating is all the more impressive given the time of the broadcast, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. EDT. Saturday's third-round coverage registered a 5.3 overnight with a 16 share, 33 percent better than the 4.0/13 in 1998. ABC did not televise the third round last year, instead opting for news coverage of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane crash. ESPN, like ABC owned by the Walt Disney Co., aired the third round last year with a national cable rating of 1.8. Full national ratings for the weekend will be available later in the week. The ratings for the British Open mirror what NBC drew last month when Woods won the U.S. Open by a record 15-stroke margin. And as was the case with Pebble Beach, viewers were not watching the coverage from St. Andrews to get a glimpse of a great head-to-head finish. Woods became, at 24, the youngest golfer to complete a career Grand Slam by beating runners-up Ernie Els and Thomas Bjorn by eight strokes, the largest margin of victory in the British Open since 1913. Woods finished at 19-under-par 269, the lowest score in relation to par ever at a major championship and the best score ever at St. Andrews. The last half-hour of ABC's British Open telecast Sunday -- with the only thing in doubt being just how much history Woods would make -- drew a 10.7 overnight rating. "He's an amazing phenomenon. He has certainly captured the imagination and the attention of the American viewing public. The ratings numbers keep proving that," ABC Sports' Mark Mandel said. And ABC got high ratings without being as Tiger-centric as NBC or CBS have been in their golf coverage. In Sunday's final round, for example, viewers saw live coverage of 61 of Woods' 69 strokes; NBC showed 67 of his 69 shots in the final round of the U.S. Open. ABC did take the opportunity to repeatedly promote its Aug. 28 made-for-TV, one-on-one "Battle at Bighorn" between Woods and Sergio Garcia. Woods' effect on television has been clear since the first of his Grand Slam tournament triumphs, a record 12-stroke victory at the 1997 Masters. The full, national rating for CBS' final-round coverage of that tournament was a 14.1 and the two-day national number was 11.2 -- both the highest in CBS' 45 years of airing the Masters. On Sunday, he provided an ideal lead-in for ABC's coverage of the Michigan 500 CART race, which registered a 2.5 overnight mark even though preliminary numbers indicate viewership decreased with each half-hour. NBC had hoped to get a boost for its U.S. Women's Open golf coverage, which started after the British Open was off the air both Saturday and Sunday, but that did not materialize. Karrie Webb was nearly as impressive as Woods on the course, winning the Women's Open by five strokes to, like Woods, pick up her third victory in the last four majors. NBC's overnight ratings, though, averaged a 1.9 for the weekend, even with 1999. Sunday's 1.9 dropped 5 percent from last year. Each rating point represents 1,080,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 100.8 million TV homes, and overnight ratings measure the largest markets, comprising 63 percent of the United States. The share is the percentage of in-use TVs tuned to a given program.
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