Tracking the shots CBS showed during Sunday Masters telecast

For the Sunday round of the Masters, I tracked the number of times CBS showed each player making a stroke. I only tracked strokes from the Sunday round, so I disregarded the highlight shots CBS aired from earlier rounds or previous years. And for the shots CBS aired multiple times, I only counted these once.

CBS showed a total of 344 strokes played during the telecast. CBS came on the air at 2pm ET and the final putt was at 6:52, so this worked out to 1.18 strokes per minute. CBS showed all but one shot from each golfer in the final group, skipping only a Bubba Watson tap-in on #2 and a Jordan Spieth tap-in on #17. Spieth scored 72, so the other "missing" stroke was the penalty drop on #12.

Early in the telecast, CBS seemed to be rooting hard for Fred Couples and cut to him frequently at the expense of other contenders until a double bogey on #11. After that, CBS focused almost exclusively on the final two groups and wound up showing a high percentage of shots from Matt Kuchar and Jonas Blixt. Overall, 74% of the on-camera strokes came from these two pairings.

The highest finisher who was not shown was Lee Westwood who came in 7th place. CBS showed a total of 20 golfers, but only seven players appeared for more than five strokes.

Best use of non-stroke air time: Jim Nantz paying tribute to the late Pat Summerall and Ken Venturi.

Worst use of stroke air time: CBS showing the out-of-contention Couples putting out for the double bogey on #11.

Here is the complete shot chart (including the three top-10 finishers not shown on the telecast):

Player	Shots shown	Finish	Pairing
Jordan Spieth	70 (of 71*)	T2	1
Bubba Watson	68 (of 69)	1	1
Matt Kuchar	58	T5	2
Jonas Blixt	57	T2	2
Fred Couples	29	T20	6
Miguel Angel Jimenez	15	4	3
Rickie Fowler	14	T5	3
Jim Furyk	5	T14	4
Thomas Bjorn	4	T8	5
John Senden	4	T8	7
Rory McIlroy	4	T8	12
Jose Maria Olazabal	4	T34	17
Kevin Stadler	3	T8	6
Adam Scott	2	T14	9
Joost Luiten	2	T26	25
Justin Rose	1	T14	5
Ian Poulter	1	T20	8
Hunter Mahan	1	T26	16
Sandy Lyle	1	T44	23
Oliver Goss	1	49	21
Lee Westwood	0	7	4
Jimmy Walker	0	T8	12
Bernhard Langer	0	T8	13
total	344

* Spieth took 71 "shots" plus one penalty stroke for a score of 72.

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