A lot of golf fans were far from happy Saturday for the third round of the 2023 Masters. It wasn’t because of controversy over who made the cut, and it wasn’t about the treacherous weather wreaking havoc on the course.
No, it was because Saturday afternoon, the two golfers at the top of the leaderboard, Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm, were nowhere to be found on national network TV.
CBS is the primary broadcaster for the Masters this weekend, like usual, but the network’s TV coverage doesn’t begin until 3 p.m. ET, as the Masters’ site notes. The CBS Sports App was streaming live from Augusta National and offered a variety of options, including live looks at featured groups.
Those featured groups included big-name players like Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth and reigning Masters champ Scottie Scheffler. Absent were the leaders, and seemingly the only way to watch Koepka and Rahm play live was through the Masters app or site.
So sure, if you wanted to watch the leaders Saturday, you had options — even if they were limited. But sports fans everywhere are used to using apps and streaming live action, so asking them to take the extra step of going through the Masters app is hardly an outrageous request.
And a happy yet unfound middle ground could have been the CBS Sports App streaming the leaders, showing Augusta and the leaders as much as possible while not disrupting scheduled TV programming nor pushing people to figure out the Masters app.
Still, some golf fans weren’t happy the Masters wasn’t on network television the entire day Saturday.
Masters Leaderboard: Live leaderboard, Schedule, Tee times
