2014 BMW Championship: Tee times, pairings for Sunday’s round at Cherry Hills

The NFL season has arrived, which means the FedEx Cup is winding down. There are just five more rounds left in the PGA Tour’s postseason, and on Sunday at Cherry Hills Country Club, the field will be cut down from the remaining 70 players to the final 30 for the TOUR Championship. It’s the largest chop of the postseason, that last 30 comprising the most exclusive field of the season on the Tour and triggering a set of coveted exemptions to majors and other big tournaments for next year.

This Cherry Hills venue, just outside Denver, is the farthest west the FedEx Cup has traveled. The third leg is usually played in the Chicago area, the most common site for the old Western Open that this event replaced. But Denver has provided a nice change of pace, with the ball flying through the air on one of the country’s more historic and classic venues. It also allowed the Tour to push tee times way back from their normal start time, the two-hour difference resulting in only afternoon tee times for the first two broadcast days. But with the NFL taking over, and NBC’s debut of Sunday Night Football, the schedule is not going to come close to brushing up against primetime like it did for the first two rounds. The first tee time will go out at 11:35 a.m. ET (or 9:35 a.m. local) so that the field can get on the course for the regular 6 p.m. finish.

The final group of the day doesn’t exactly have the star power it did on Saturday, when both Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia anchored the tee sheet. But the names at the top of the leaderboard and bottom of the tee sheet are still some of the biggest stars left in the postseason, including Sergio, Bubba Watson, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, and Martin Kaymer. Billy Horscel is the favorite, starting Sunday three shots clear of the field and playing with Kaymer and Ryan Palmer. Rory will be out at 12:35 p.m., playing with the guy he overtook for No. 1 in the world, Adam Scott.

With a limited 70-man field, the Tour continues to send them off split tees and in groups of three. This condenses the entire field into a two-hour window of tee times, as opposed to a full day of rolling twosomes off just the No.1 tee. That creates a better TV experience, because the entire field is out on the course at the same time and there are ample options for coverage. For example, Rory, who’s a good nine shots off the lead, will play almost his entire round during the TV coverage window. So if there’s another ghastly four-putt, we’ll be able to see it live.

Here’s the full tee sheet for Sunday’s final round at the BMW: