Mike Weir Fires a 61 at Deutsche Bank, Nobody Sees It

It's the second week of the FedEx Cup, Vijay Singh is fresh off an moderately exciting overtime win over Sergio Garcia and that other guy (okay, it was Kevin Sutherland, but come on...) at the Barclays Championship, and there's another big name atop the leaderboard in Norton, Mass: Mike Weir.

And not only is he leading the tournament heading into the weekend, he's doing it in record-breaking fashion: Weir fired a 10-under 16 on Friday, the lowest round of his PGA career, and a TPC Boston course record. One problem: nobody saw it.

Sure, there were people in the gallery (I assume), but in terms of television viewers, the ratings have to be somewhere south of anything you might find on CW. I'm just hazarding a guess based on what I watched yesterday, but since I'll watch anything marginally related to golf, I'm probably a fair representation. (Plus, sample size = 1 is more than enough data to make broad, sweeping generalizations.)

Yes, this has everything to do with the latest iteration of Andy Richter (really, do I even have to mention his name?), and less to do with the rest of the tour's big names stepping up to fill the void. If a Vijay-Sergio sudden death (figuratively) at the Barclays doesn't move the ratings needle, it's more a testament to the power of Tiger than the quality of play when he's not around. That's hardly earth-shattering stuff, particularly since we've seen viewership nosedive since Woods called it a season back in June.

On the upside, the Deutsche Bank still has a $7,000,000 purse, even if nobody sees it.