Wie's Win Doubles Golf Channel Ratings

Michelle Wie still has pull. That was something I was beginning to wonder about during the first round of the Lorena Ochoa Invitational last week: Despite being on the leaderboard through much of the Golf Channel's first-round coverage, Wie didn't get much TV time. That was a major change from a few years ago when, as with Tiger Woods on the PGA Tour, Wie would sometimes dominate coverage whether she was threatening the lead or not.

Was Wie's ability to draw attention, to draw crowds, to draw coverage, disappearing? Had her cachet been squandered? I wondered, too, when on Monday morning my local newspaper didn't even give Wie's victory a separate story; that paper buried it in a briefs package.

Whoops.

Yes, Michelle Wie still has pull. I have firsthand knowledge of this because traffic doubled after Wie's victory last Sunday. And today, the Golf Channel announced that its ratings doubled during the final round of the Lorena Ochoa Invitational.

The Golf Channel's final-round coverage drew a 0.72 rating, which doesn't sound like much but is double "the typical final-round ratings for LPGA Tour events on Golf Channel in 2009," the network said. It's also a 60-percent increase over the final round of the 2008 Lorena Ochoa Invitational.

And it's the second highest-rated LPGA broadcast of 2009, behind only the final day of the Solheim Cup.

Oh, one more thing: Wie's win also doubled the ratings of the PGA Tour's Children's Miracle Network Classic final round on the Golf Channel. The Disney tournament received a 0.36 rating.

If you've ever had trouble understanding why so many people believe Wie is so important to the LPGA's future, well, now you know.