Used to be that TV ratings suffered when Tiger Woods did not play in a golf tournament.
Now, things are so bad for the onetime superstar golfer that ratings go down when he does play.
After Woods played the worst golf of his career, ratings for the final round of the Bridgestone Invitational were down 51 percent over last year, when Woods won the event.
But more telling, the ratings were down 34 percent from 2008 — when Woods did not even play in the tournament.
The absence of Woods from golf has been a perennial problem for golf ratings ever since Woods started to dominate the game 10 years ago. Viewers want to see him play — and when he does not, they turn off the set by the millions.
But if the latest ratings trend holds up, the game has a new problem: people are tuning out rather than watching the one-time champion struggle and fail.