Sunday, April 12, 2015

Shot chart from CBS Sunday Masters telecast - 2015

I tracked the number of strokes CBS showed for each player during the telecast of the final round of the Masters. CBS showed 348 strokes played from the Sunday round. The telecast began at 2pm ET and the final putt was holed at 6:54, resulting in 1.18 strokes per minute - the same average as when I performed similar shot tracking for the 2014 Masters.

CBS showed all but one stroke of winner Jordan Spieth, skipping only a tap-in on hole 6. CBS bypassed just two tap-ins for Justin Rose and showed all but eight shots by Phil Mickelson. 57% of the televised strokes came from these three players as nobody else was really in contention for the Green Jacket.

The network went a bit overboard on Tiger Woods showing 35 strokes. Overall, CBS focused primarily on the final three pairings (81% of the televised strokes) with only Dustin Johnson getting any significant coverage from the rest of the field.

The highest finishers who were not shown were Kevin Na, Bill Haas, and Ryan Moore who were part of the tie for 12th. CBS showed a total of 23 golfers, but only seven players appeared for more than eight strokes.

For comparison, here are the Sunday shot charts I compiled from the other 2014 majors:
Here is the complete shot chart (including the highest finishers not shown on the telecast):

PlayerShots shownFinishPairing
Jordan Spieth69 (of 70)11
Justin Rose68 (of 70)T21
Phil Mickelson61 (of 69)T22
Tiger Woods35T173
Rory McIlroy3443
Dustin Johnson21T65
Charley Hoffman15T92
Zach Johnson8T97
Bubba Watson5T3814
Hideki Matsuyama455
Ian Poulter4T66
Rickie Fowler4T1213
Keegan Bradley4T2222
Mark O'Meara3T2223
Adam Scott3T3815
Paul Casey2T66
Lee Westwood2T4615
Hunter Mahan1T99
Kevin Streelman1T124
Sergio Garcia1T1710
Ernie Els1T2212
Steve Stricker1T2823
Sangmoon Bae1T3318
Kevin Na0T124
Bill Haas0T129
Ryan Moore0T1210
others0
total348

Note: The Pairing column reflects the tee time groupings in reverse order, so 1 =  final pairing, 2 = next-to-last, etc.