Xander Schauffele's PGA Championship win eclipses Brooks Koepka's 2023 TV viewership number
Xander Schauffele's epic win at the PGA Championship had 10% more viewers than the year prior when Brooks Koepka earned his fifth Major title. Schauffele earned his first, and the final round saw 4.958 million viewers. Last year's final round saw 4.517 million.
Neither year was particularly uninteresting. Even last year, the margin of victory was small as it was just two strokes. Xander Schauffele won by a single stroke in 2024, but it's not as if it was tremendously more hotly contested this time around.
Last year, Koepka was also searching for the first Major win as a member of LIV Golf. No golfer who had defected from the PGA Tour had yet to win a Major, so Koepka set history in that regard.
On the other hand, Schauffele was chasing his first-ever Major win this time around. Viktor Hovland, who ended up placing third with a -18 performance, was also in search of his maiden Major.
The resulting contest largely came down to Schauffele vs. Bryson DeChambeau, so there was some LIV vs. PGA Tour intrigue in the final round in 2024, but that was true when Koepka defeated Hovland and Scottie Scheffler by two strokes in 2023.
This is noteworthy given the ratings dip at the Masters Tournament. Scheffler's second career green jacket had a lower final-round rating than the past two editions of the tournament.
There was some concern about fans being disinterested in the sport thanks to the divide between PGA and LIV. However, the ratings bounced back in a big way at Valhalla on May 19 for the PGA Championship, so perhaps the concerns were overblown.
It helps that several golfers put in outstanding performances this year. Not only did two players shoot 20 below or better, but there were also 34 golfers who would have tied or surpassed Koepka's 2023 score. The course had something to do with that, but lower scores are generally a positive in the eyes of viewers.
Xander Schauffele addresses Scottie Scheffler's arrest at PGA Championship
While Scottie Scheffler was not really in the competition by the time the final round rolled around, it's certainly plausible that fans tuned in to watch the conclusion of the PGA Championship to see how he'd do after his viral arrest.
Xander Schauffele, the eventual winner, revealed via Yahoo! Sports that a group chat involving Scheffler, Justin Thomas, and several others took part in messing with the world number one about it. Schauffele said:
"He handled it really well. In Scottie Scheffler fashion − he's a good dude. As soon as I saw it, I thought it was a prank and then I saw it on the news and was like: 'Holy smokes, this actually happened!' It feels like he's going to come out OK from all this, it feels like things are going to get dropped."
Schauffele also revealed that the group chat picture was changed to Scheffler's now infamous mugshot.