It is very early in the year to be proclaiming the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award but Rory McIlroy is already odds-on to become the first golfer in 36 years to win it.
His dramatic triumph at the Masters on Sunday was watched by millions, many of whom had witnessed his repeated failures in years gone by.
It’s hard to deny the strength of McIlroy’s claim to the top prize at the 72nd edition of Spoty. The achievement alone of winning the Masters, accepted by most as the greatest of golf’s four majors, surely inks him onto the shortlist.
That he looked so close to losing it by his own hand on Sunday – only to drag himself back ahead – makes him a force to be reckoned with.
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There will be others, of course. Luke Littler finished second in Spoty last year and that was before he won the World Darts Championship; it is still early but Lando Norris looks to have a good shot at claiming his first Formula One world title; Emily Scarratt could complete the ultimate comeback after neck surgery if she wins a second Rugby World Cup for England in the autumn, this time on home soil.
All will capture the popular imagination in their own way, and it is the public who will ultimately decide the winner on the night of the ceremony once a panel of industry experts – including three from the BBC – has selected the shortlist of six.
The voting procedure has evolved over the years, but perhaps the most significant change came in 2012 when the “panel” was cut from 30 to 12 – and it became more of a collaborative process with an emphasis on “the impact of the person’s sporting achievement beyond the sport in question”.
As a result, golf has suffered.
Prior to that switch, golfers had finished on the podium eight times, including winners in 1957 (Dai Rees) and 1989 (Nick Faldo). Since 2012, only McIlroy has broken into the top three, finishing second in 2014 to Lewis Hamilton. In 2022, US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick wasn’t even nominated.
It is no coincidence that half of Hamilton’s races that year were shown on the BBC while McIlroy’s annus mirabilis, the Open Championship aside, had largely been played out exclusively on Sky.
And golf was already being eased out of Broadcasting House by that point. The BBC ended its 60 years of live Open coverage in 2015, BBC Sport’s then head honcho Barbara Slater blaming the “highly inflationary nature of the rights market” and tough economic conditions.
Four years later, the Masters disappeared behind the paywall of Sky Sports too. Golf did not, one report suggested, “suit the demographic” the BBC was chasing.
But there is still sizeable interest in the sport across the UK, with more than a million people playing golf at least twice a month.
The Royal and Ancient Golf Club’s most recently available data estimated a staggering 5.5 million people played a round of golf in 2023. And that doesn’t even count those who watch but never play.
So it’s no surprise McIlroy’s slaying of his white whale still had a huge “impact”, despite it culminating on an expensive TV channel after midnight on a Sunday, as a peak audience of 1.85 million tuned into the drama from Augusta.
And if similar numbers watch McIlroy lead the European team to overseas Ryder Cup victory in the autumn, Spoty is surely a done deal. But you never know. Golf remains a hard sell at the BBC.
