Ratings Show Scottie Scheffler's Stardom Isn't Near Caitlin Clark's

The world’s top-ranked golfer for the 47th consecutive week heading into the Masters and the favorite to win the tournament, Scottie Scheffler will likely be the favorite to win May’s PGA Championship, June’s U.S. Open and July’s Open Championship after capturing his second green jacket in three years on Sunday afternoon in Augusta.

Situated amid a crowded top of the leaderboard on Sunday morning, Scheffler had a dominant final round that gave him an 11-under par final score and held off Ludvig Aberg, Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa and Max Homa. To cap it off, the 27-year-old had to sink a two-foot putt. Before he did, Jim Nantz opined about Scheffler on CBS.

“People have been wondering, ‘Who is the next star in golf?’” Nantz said. “Maybe they just haven’t realized he was here the whole time.” After Scheffler drained his Masters-winning putt, Nantz was brief: “His stardom confirmed.”

Unfortunately for Scheffler, Nantz and the PGA Tour in general, the ratings for Sunday offered an opposite conclusion as the CBS audience for the final round plunged 20% to 9.589 million viewers, down from 12.058 million in 2023, according to Front Office Sports. That’s the weakest audience for the final round of the Masters since Hideki Matsuyama, not exactly a household name, pulled in 9.64 million final-round viewers with his 2021 victory.

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The first betting favorite to win the Masters since 2005 when Tiger Woods pulled it off, Scheffler is not even close to the star that Woods was and still is even though he’s already 10th on the PGA Tour’s all-time career earnings list with $57.6 million. He’s also not even close to as big of a star as a younger athlete who’s probably going to earn far less than that throughout her career unless things change dramatically: Caitlin Clark.

The No. 1 pick in Monday’s WNBA Draft, which drew a record 2.45 million viewers on ESPN, Clark will receive a four-year contract worth a total of $338,056 to suit up for the Indiana Fever, according to the WNBA’s CBA. Her total earnings over that period should be far more as the 22-year-old already has endorsement deals with brands like State Farm, Gatorade and Nike and should be able to attract even more sponsors. That still won’t put her even close to Scheffler, who pocketed a $3.6 million winner’s check at the Masters, but it won’t stop her from blowing him out of the water in the ratings department.

Though the University of South Carolina was the winner of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, ESPN and ABC also scored two Sundays ago when the Gamecocks knocked off Clark and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes as the game averaged about 18.7 million viewers and peaked at a whopping 24 million viewers combined. That means the telecast, which beat the 14.82 million viewers who tuned in to watch the UConn Huskies beat Purdue in the men’s championship game, just about doubled the viewership for Scheffler’s final-round win in Augusta.

When it comes to Clark, her stardom is confirmed. For Scheffler, confirmation is still pending.