TOUR Championship 2014: Tee times, pairings for Thursday’s round at East Lake

The first round of the final tournament of the PGA Tour season tees off just before Noon in Atlanta on Thursday. The TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club has become the annual finale to the FedEx Cup, where just 30 players compete for the final $10 million grand prize.

The TOUR Championship has the smallest, most exclusive field of the season and it obviously gives the PGA Tour a ton of flexibility when it comes to scheduling out tee times. With a scheduled TV finish around 6 p.m. ET, the Tour will start sending the groups off at 11:45 a.m. ET, and in twosomes all off the first tee. Even with just 70 players last week at the BMW Championship, the Tour kept the field in groups of three off split tees, mostly so the tee sheet could be condensed into two hours so everyone was on the course during the TV coverage window. Now that 40 more players were bounced from the postseason, there’s obviously no reason to put the field in anything but twosomes off just one tee.

Gary Woodland will be out first in that 11:45 a.m. group and he’s the only player without a partner. This year’s TOUR Championship has the odd distinction of hosting just 29 players. That’s because the 30th-ranked golfer in this week’s FedEx Cup standings is Dustin Johnson. He’s obviously indisposed at the moment, and was never going to make it to East Lake. But even sitting out a month, and the first three playoff events, wasn’t enough for DJ to tumble out of the top 30. His spot was not filled by the next available guy, but rather went unclaimed and reduced the field to 29. So Woodland will be out solo on Thursday while Johnson, perhaps still in Idaho, will wait for his $175k bonus check that’s still coming even though he didn’t play. Too bad, because that pairing might be the most powerful longest-hitting duo imaginable.

While Woodland will zoom through the course playing by himself, the top two players in the FedEx Cup standings, Chris Kirk and Billy Horschel, will anchor the tee sheet. They’re set to go out at 2 p.m. ET, the Tour again targeting that four-hour round and 6 p.m. finish. Pairing players according to their spot in the FEC standings is the custom of the opening rounds during FedEx Cup play. That can make for some awkward and unnatural groups where the stars, who are always clustered together during normal Tour events, are broken up and scattered all over the tee sheet. But this field is so small that it doesn’t really matter -- everyone is on the course at the same time.

Here’s the tee sheet for Thursday’s first round at East Lake: