British Open 2014 TV schedule: Coverage of Saturday’s round at Hoylake

It’s not a British Open until the elements start causing chaos, and on Saturday, Royal Liverpool should get hammered with severe thunderstorms. The forecast calls for a lightning show and even hail beginning at 2 a.m. local and potentially lasting all the way up until noon.

The R&A will let the Open go through some of the more extreme conditions, but there’s nothing they can do about lightning. Occasionally, they’ll stop a British Open if the wind gusts are so bad that a ball cannot stay still when you place it on a green, but that’s about it. Lightning, which is more rare on the British links setups, is a different matter. And if these storms are as bad as they’re predicting, there’s nothing they can do to get the third round on schedule.

In order to get around the storms coming and try to complete a full round on Saturday, the R&A took the drastic step to send the players off in threesomes off split tees. That’s a first for the Open Championship, which is playing its 143rd edition this year. The extended daylight hours in the UK this time of year always provide plenty of scheduling cushion, and as is custom with a links course, everyone goes out off the first tee and comes back into the clubhouse on the back nine. Unlike the U.S. Open or PGA Championship, the Open can even send first and second round groups of three off just one tee with rolling times from about 6:30 a.m. past 4 p.m. There’s that much sunlight. So it was met with shock and disapproval when they announced they would condense the remaining field, now cut in half, into groups of three and utilize the two-tee system. They’ll move everything up into this condensed clutter and start it all at 9 a.m. local, with the final tee times going off just after 11 a.m. (6 a.m. ET). For comparison’s sake, last year’s tee times ran from 8 a.m. local to about 3 p.m. local in Scotland.

With the schedule now condensed and pushed up, ESPN reacted on the fly and changed their TV schedule for Saturday’s third round as well. The network, originally scheduled to come on the air at 7 a.m. ET in the States, will now go live at 5 a.m. ET. They will be on the air just an hour after the very first groups of the day start, so every player will play most of his round during the coverage window.

ESPN has the sole rights to this event, and obviously has a ton of air space and multiple channels to carry the coverage live until its conclusion, which may drag on late in the day if the poor weather persists. If there are no interruptions once the new schedule starts, then the leaders should wrap up their round by about 10:30 or 11 a.m. ET. And those final groups are absolutely loaded. There’s the trio at the top comprised of Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, and Francesco Molinari. And then going off the 10th tee at the same time as those leaders is the group towards the bottom of the leaderboard, and it’s made up of Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth, and Rhein Gibson (one of these things is not like the other). Those are some heavy hitters to keep up with late in the round.

Here are all your media options for Saturday’s third round (all times ET):

5 a.m. to conclusion (~11 a.m. if no weather delays) -- ESPN

5 a.m. -- ESPN3 simulcast of TV coverage and Spanish feed

6 a.m. -- ESPN3 Tiger Woods stream

9 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET -- ESPN Radio / PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 93/208)