PGA Championship 2014 TV schedule and coverage for Sunday’s final round

We have just 18 more holes left of major championship golf in the 2014 season, and Jim Nantz will be there to guide us home. CBS starts the major championship season at the Masters, and finishes it off with the PGA Championship in August. It’s the high point of their summer schedule and they’re the only network that carries the conclusion to two separate major championships.

The PGA has an unwarranted rep as the least prestigious of the four, the opposite of the Masters. But it can produce the most exciting golf. The PGA of America is not obsessed with protecting par in the same way the USGA is at the U.S. Open. Players can roll in lots of birdies and come from down the leaderboard, or a leaderboard can get bunched up as everyone fires away.

And that has never been more evident than this week, as a 7400-yard Valhalla course gets carved up by the top talents in the world. Golf is often hammered as being too slow to be a desirable spectator sport, and that can definitely be the case too often. But for a 30-minute span late on Saturday, the birdies and eagle chances came every minute as the leaderboard shuffled around and a wave of players joined the battle. It was probably the most exciting stretch of major championship play this year. It was also pretty great TV, whether you’re into golf and knew who these guys were or just a casual fan peeking in. The stretch reinforced that sometimes making a course tough just to be tough isn’t the best approach for your event, but having the best players in the world go low can sometimes bruise the ego of club members and golf’s organizing bodies.

If we get anything like the action we had on Saturday, then Sunday will be a blast to watch on CBS. Gary McCord and David Feherty were worked into full lather, cracking jokes and using off-the-wall superlatives that you never knew existed to describe all the amazing shots and putts. And then there’s Uncle Verne Lundquist, making one of his few golf appearances and meeting the moment of excitement. It’s an altogether solid crew for golf that can actually make it more humorous and entertaining.

TNT will once again have the early coverage, coming on the air at 11 a.m. ET. They use many of the same CBS folks, with Ian Baker-Finch in the main analyst chair and Ernie Johnson coming over from his NBA duties for four days of golf work. But the first few hours are spent more on features and spotlighting the PGA of America with the field that’s actually playing the course well out of it.

Rory McIlroy and Bernd Wiesberger are in the final pairing, off No. 1 tee just before 3 p.m. ET. The scheduled TV finish is 7 p.m., but it will probably run a little long past that. The last two times Valhalla hosted a PGA we needed a playoff, and if that happened again, coverage would probably run past 8 p.m.

Aside from another 54-hole lead for McIlroy, we also have Phil Mickelson making another run and Rickie Fowler trying to edge out what will probably be his top contemporary for the next 20 years. It’s been an underwhelming season both on the PGA Tour and at the majors, but Sunday is setup well for the TV audience. Here are all your media options for the final round:

11 a.m.-2 p.m. -- TNT

2-7 p.m. -- CBS

1-7 p.m. -- SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio

11 a.m.-7 p.m. -- Par 3 stream via the PGA Championship app

11 a.m.-7 p.m. -- Marquee groups via the PGA Championship app

2-7 p.m. -- CBS simulcast via the CBS Sports app