Collin Morikawa Provides Simple Solution To Golf's TV Coverage Problem

Collin Morikawa hopes that the PGA Tour's new deal can help to improve golf telecasts - and even offered his own simple solution to the problem facing fans.

Earlier in the week, the PGA Tour announced a deal with a consortium of American sports team owners that will see up to $3bilion pumped into PGA Tour Enterprises - the new, for-profit wing of the Tour - which is now set to be valued at around $12bn.

A large portion of that will go towards the player equity programme as well as helping fund the increased tournament prize money. However, Morikawa is one of several top pros who want to see some of the cash put towards attracting new eyeballs to the sport.

Figures from the Sports Business Journal revealed that the most-watched golf event of 2023 - the final round of the Masters - ranked a lowly 131st in the most-watched US sports telecasts of that year.

But for the American, the solution is simple - show more golf shots.

"Well, I mean, you first need to see more golf shots. Like that's like the No. 1 bullet point," Morikawa bluntly explained at his press conference ahead of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

"I turn on golf on a Thursday if I play early, I turn it on and I see three golf shots and I question why. The reason why people pay attention to other sports is because people see more, you can probably bet more. People like betting when you can watch it live, not watch it on ShotTracer.

"Golf's not going to be as high speed, you know, body contact, people tackling. Like that's just golf, right? But I think most fans understand that. 

"Like I'm not going to go dance down the fairway or celebrate differently on a birdie putt on the sixth hole on Friday. But just seeing birdie putts and seeing more shots, that's going to bring more viewers in because you can actually watch golf, right? 

"So that's already going to make it entertaining in and of itself. You can't change what golf is. You can't change the aspect of we've got 18 holes, you've got players to start on Thursday, you're going to have two waves, all this stuff, you can't change that. 

"But you can change the fact of seeing more golf shots and that's a big part of actually saying I want to go watch golf."

Max Homa was another who chimed in with his thoughts on golf's telecast debate, with the fellow American hopeful that the new investment can translate into an improved TV product due to the consortium's wealth of sporting experience.

"I know everyone is sick of hearing about how much more money golfers are getting," he said. 

"My optimism lies in the main point of this which is we now have very savvy and experienced stakeholders who have a lot of incentive to improve the product creatively and make it better for the fans.

"This investment group isn’t just donating money," he added in a reply to a fan. 

"They want to make money. So they need people to watch golf to make money. So they’d better do a damn good job to make this more watchable and entertaining for the fans."