PGA Championship 2014 tee times: Pairings for the first two rounds

There’s still 36 hours until the first tee ball is hit at the 96th PGA Championship, but the full field of 156 players already know who they’ll play with for the first two rounds. With the field nearly complete, the PGA of America decided to assemble an early draft of the tee sheet last weekend, plugging in gaps with late qualifiers and additions to fill up the 52 threesomes.

For now, the field is full at 156, but we might be losing the most famous player in the world at some point before Thursday morning. Tiger Woods is set to tee off with Phil Mickelson and Padraig Harrington at 8:35 a.m. ET on No. 10. The assumption of many is that he’ll withdraw with his latest back injury and never make the trip to Louisville. But if the injury is separate from the one that kept him on the shelf for more than three months earlier this year, then Tiger may give it a go one last time in 2014 before packing it up for the winter. We really have no idea at this point. He’s not going to contend even if he does play, but watching him out there with Phil Mickelson would still be the biggest draw of the entire four-day stay at Louisville.

Mickelson has got the best of Woods when the two have been paired together over the past five years. Tiger had always owned Phil when the two played side-by-side, but since then, Phil has been able to set aside some of Tiger’s tricks and actually prefers to get paired up with the 14-time major winner. On Sunday in Akron, he was in an adjacent fairway when Tiger walked off injured and lamented the possibility of missing the chance to play with Woods this week.

I mean, I hope he’s able to play next week. I hope it’s a muscle and nothing serious because I’m really looking forward to playing with him. We rarely get paired together. If we do, it’s been early Saturday. So it’s nice to be paired together and have a couple of rounds and I hope he’s able to play it. As much as I love playing with him, playing against him, trying to beat him, it’s we all want him in the field. We all want him back.

Phil hasn’t exactly lit it up this year either, but did find something in that final round at Firestone to shoot his lowest round of the year, a 62. It’s been an underwhelming season on the PGA Tour, and breaking up this threesome at the season’s final major would be another blow. At the moment, John Huh is the alternate who would fill Tiger’s spot if he withdraws.

Some of the bigger names on the side of the draw with Tiger and Phil are Rickie Fowler, Adam Scott, Jordan Spieth, and Jason Day, who all probably have a better chance to win than either Woods or Mickelson. The marquee group on the other side of the draw features the overwhelming favorite, Rory McIlroy, who will play with Bubba Watson and Martin Kaymer through the first 36 holes. That’s the PGA custom of grouping the first three major winners of the year together.

Here’s the full set of pairings and the tee sheet for Thursday’s opening round: