• by Wayne Friedman , August 11, 2014

CBS’ PGA Golf Championship -- spilling over for two hours in the prime time, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. -- scored well for the network. The high-profile golf event earned a Nielsen preliminary 2.4 rating/8 share among 18-49 viewers and 11.6 million overall viewers.

CBS says 26.3 million watched all or part of the multi-hour Sunday coverage -- the highest number in five years since 2009, when CBS pulled in 29.0 million as Y.E. Yang won, with Tiger Woods coming in second. Rory McIlroy won this year’s event.

Golf champion Tiger Woods, who attempted to come back from surgery and a recent injury, didn’t make the cut for the final two days of play in this year’s event. Woods has been a major reason for higher TV golf viewership over the years.

The network's other strong result for the night was with “Big Brother” at 10 p.m., posting a 1.7/5 and 5.4 million viewers.  The show’s 1.7 rating among 18-49 viewers was down from a 2.0 rating a week ago.

Three other original Sunday night shows -- Fox’s “Teen Choice Awards” (0.8/3); ABC’s “Wipeout” (0.8/3) and ABC’s “Rising Star” (0.7/2) -- earned similar results for 18-49 viewers as well as in total viewers.

CBS’ overall Sunday results (2.0/7 for its 18-49 demographic and 9 million overall average viewers) were more than double its nearest competitors -- ABC (0.8/3 and 3.7 million viewers); NBC (0.8/3 and 3.3 million viewers); Fox (0.8/3 and 2.2 million viewers); and Univision (0.7/2 and 2.0 million viewers).