Contrasting family storylines pump up Masters television ratings in U.S. and Canada

A final round 67 gave Phil Mickelson his third Masters title and fourth major championship Sunday at the Masters at Augusta National. It also gave the iconic tournament one of the more interesting photo finishes in the world of sport in 2010.

Images of Mickelson embracing his wife Amy in a joyous yet tearful hug Sunday went worldwide on television, internet and print at the conclusion of the Masters, which was Mickelson's first major in four years. The photograph was worth at least the proverbial thousand words given the battle Amy is fighting against breast cancer and how the illness has shaped much of what her golfer husband has done or not done on the PGA Tour over the past year.

It was an emotional moment for Lefty and his family.

It also couldn't have painted a starker contrast between Mickelson as a poster boy husband and his rival Tiger Woods, who used the Masters to return to the PGA Tour after a five-month absence triggered by his bizarre car accident November 27th, 2009 and the sex scandal that followed.

The juxtaposition of Mickelson against Woods was not lost in all of the buzz surrounding Tiger's much-anticipated comeback.

The two diametrically-opposed storylines were one of the reasons why the 2010 Masters became the third most-watched golf event in U.S. television ratings history. At a rating of 12 and a share of 25, this year's tournament ranked behind only Woods' first Masters win in 1997 (15.8 and 32) and his second title at Augusta in 2001 (12.9 and 27). Not only did the television numbers grow by 36% over 2009 on CBS in the United States, they were up 74% on Global Television in Canada, with 1.8 million Canadians watching Sunday's final round.

Numbers like that and a 43% increase on ESPN in the U.S. and audience numbers on TSN in Canada that were 76% north of the previous Masters record do not happen on the strength of hard core golf fans alone. They are fueled by so-called "soft users", ranging from sports fans who only watch headline-making golf to non-sports fans drawn by other factors (in this case the comeback of Woods and the compelling family story surrounding Mickelson).

For all the anxiety felt inside the golf industry over the past few months as its cash cow struggled through a messy media firestorm and messier public relations, could it be that the Woods scandal will only prove to be a boost for the PGA Tour?

Is it possible that the bubble bursting on the public image of Tiger Woods will have many of us finding both him and his major rivals on the tour more interesting than we did a year ago, rather than less compelling?

The early returns on the television ratings for the 2010 Masters, along with the record internet page views and online traffic around the tournament, appear to suggest exactly that.

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If Tiger Woods can bottle some of that humility, his public relations drive will go further

He wasn't even in the game of effective crisis management in December and January...he was out of bounds on proper media relations with his unilateral video statement February 12th...in the rough with his two controlled, five-minute interviews with Tom Rinaldi of ESPN and Kelly Tilghman of the Golf Channel on March 21st.

Finally, in his third shot at it in the first three months of 2010, Tiger Woods finally made it onto the fairway of professional public relations today with his 35-minute media conference at Augusta -- his first truly interactive PR event since the bizarre car accident of November 27th, 2009 and the resulting flood of allegations and eventual admissions of infidelity throughout December.

Off the tee, Woods did the right thing by apologizing to his fellow PGA Tour players for causing them to have to deal with the fallout from his sex scandal -- while he was either silent or disrespectfully fueling even more questions by scheduling his media statements in the middle of Tour events. He was sorry for being such a distraction and for inconveniencing them as he has over the past five months.

While he is still having difficulty getting his head around some of the areas of questioning -- which will not go away anytime soon -- he still gave enough new information to make the media conference more than just a necessary evil for him; five stitches and a sore neck, a torn achilles and blood platelet therapy from Toronto's own Dr. Anthony Galea to help him heal faster.

Yet more than anything, what Tiger did right today was finally show some humility.

If Tiger Woods the athlete can find a way to bottle that humility and humanity, his public relations drive will go a lot further. It might never fully repatriate the impossibly clean image he had before the car crash and sex scandal, but it would do enough to largely restore Tiger Woods, Inc. as a billion-dollar empire and an athlete corporation valued at more than $600 million US.

To get there, he needs to strike a balance between the two very different Tigers on display today at Augusta, four days before he strikes his first ball back on Tour in the opening round of the Masters on Thursday.

The first was the Tiger who was tight, stern and sometimes short in the face of questions on the scandal. The second was a Tiger who smiled and comfortably handled the golf questions, even gushing at the prospect of playing again and winning on the PGA Tour.

The second Tiger is someone the golf media and the world haven't seen a lot of since his early years on the tour. It's a Tiger who would bring a lot of people -- fans, media and sponsors -- back into his tent over time. It might even earn him some new fans among those of us who have found it difficult to connect with the robotic Tiger, largely because he rarely worked to engage us at any level other than as a golf superstar.

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