Deutsche Bank Championship 2014: Tee times, pairings for Friday’s round at TPC Boston

If you wake up Friday in a panicked sweat worried you missed the start of the second leg of the FedEx Cup, and we know some of you will, fret not. The Deutsche Bank Championship is the one event of the PGA Tour season that starts on Friday. So good news, you haven’t missed anything.

With the holiday weekend, the annual stop in Boston is the one tournament that has a pre-planned Monday finish. It leaves Thursday afternoons empty and hollow, but the extra weekend day of golf, and during the postseason, is a welcome change as the calendar flips to September. It will, however, make next week pretty short with the players having to turnaround and fly to Denver for the BMW Championship which starts with a normal Thursday opening round.

The FedEx Cup field has now been trimmed from the original 125 to 100, so it’s a manageable group for the first two rounds of a tournament. The Tour still sends them off split tees and in groups of three for the first two rounds, packing the course for a full day of golf for the spectators and TV audience. Should weather hit, however, they will have ample flexibility to adjust and still get things wrapped up on time or back on schedule. It was a near miracle they finished on Labor Day last year after a weekend of awful weather, but that’s the benefit of having a small field.

Rory McIlroy, no longer No. 1 in the FedEx Cup standings, will once again start his opening round in the morning wave. Keeping with custom, the Tour has grouped the top three players in the current standings together for the first two rounds at TPC Boston. Rory will go off with new No. 1 Hunter Mahan and No. 3 Jimmy Walker at 9:08 a.m. ET on Friday. It was the first round last week in New Jersey that wiped out Rory’s chances of winning his fourth straight start. He attributed most of that 3-over 74 to a lack of practice after he took the week off and trotted around the globe to enjoy his PGA Championship title. There should be no such slow start this week. Rory should be back in the under-par form we’ve seen over the past two months. A low-to-mid 60s number to start the week seems likely on this longer but gettable course. He’s already committed to playing in Denver next week, and seems eager to cap off his incredible summer with a huge payday and postseason win.

Unless there’s a weather delay, Rory’s group will play their first round before TV coverage goes live at 2:30 p.m. ET. But they should be featured on PGATour.com’s featured groups stream, which kicks on at 8 a.m. The afternoon TV coverage will be headlined by Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson, and Rickie Fowler, who are all in the PM draw to start the week. Here’s the tee sheet for Friday’s first round at the Deutsche Bank: