How to watch 2014 TOUR Championship online, TV schedule and more

The forecast in Atlanta for the next three days is not exactly promising, so the PGA Tour is going to aggressively try and get out in front of things on Friday at the TOUR Championship. The schedule was moved up about three hours for the second round, with the new tee times beginning at 8:45 a.m. ET and the final group going out at 11 a.m. ET. The original schedule had the final pairing out at 2 p.m. for a finish right around 6 p.m, but expect things to wrap up around 3 p.m. on Friday afternoon.

It’s not uncommon for the Tour to move the schedule up, especially after the field has been cut in half and there’s some flexibility with the tee times. This week’s event is as flexible as it gets, with only 29 players in the field. That’s the smallest of the season by a wide margin. There are only 15 tee times to schedule, so you’re looking at a max two-hour window of groups and that includes keeping them in twosomes off just one tee. So with a 60 percent chance of rain and storms, and more of the same in the weekend forecast, the schedule was bumped up three hours.

This has happened before at this event. Again, the small field gives the Tour plenty of latitude to compensate for even the threat of bad weather, and we saw the schedule altered on multiple days last year. So TV partners were at the ready for this year, and Golf Channel promptly announced that they were pushing their schedule up three hours as well.

We often have to rely on tape-delayed coverage when tee times are altered, but this being the TOUR Championship, and given the small field, we saw a quick change on the fly from GC. They will now come on the air at 10 a.m. ET, and carry coverage until the conclusion of play. If there are no weather delays, the finish should come sometime between 2:30 and 3 p.m. ET. With little traffic out on the course, and playing in pairs, these guys are getting around East Lake in under four hours pretty comfortably.

In addition to the TV change, the streaming schedule was also bumped up. PGATour.com will be up and running first right as Geoff Ogilvy goes off in the first tee time of the day at 8:45 a.m. The stream is expected to focus on the action at the 1st and 18th holes. Here’s the updated media schedule for Friday’s second round:

10 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET -- Golf Channel

3 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET -- Golf Channel (replay)

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