Golf

2015 Presidents Cup viewer’s guide: How to watch online, TV schedule and more

Jordan Spieth can’t believe just how late you’ll need to stay up to watch the 12-man USA team take on the world at this week’s Presidents Cup. Embrace it -- drink your coffee or go out late and come home to some middle-of-the-night team match play.

by Brendan Porath

Oct 7, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

Scott Halleran/Getty Images

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Presidents Cup 2015: Match results, live updates, and scores from Thursday in Korea

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The end of the FedExCup heralds in the start of the “silly season” in golf. The last three months of the year are largely a time when the best players in the world disappear, work on their games, fiddle with equipment, and maybe work out and get some exercise. The new wraparound schedule has added a few more meaningful PGA Tour events during this stretch, but it’s still an off-time. The top players in the world pop up at different quirky events around the globe, many of them paying out nice appearance fees.

Before that all sets in, however, there is one last competitive event that attracts the best players in the world. The team match play competitions have become an annual season-ending event and this year it’s the Presidents Cup. The event matches a 12-man USA roster against 12 International stars who are not from Europe and would otherwise play on that Ryder Cup team. It carries nowhere near the weight, appeal, and importance of the Ryder Cup, but it’s still fun to watch these world-class pros play in such different circumstances than the rest of the year.

The Presidents Cup bounces around the globe, alternating from a U.S. venue to some non-European course. The International sites have been in Australia, South Africa, and Canada. This year’s edition marks the first Cup in Asia, with the PGA Tour choosing Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in Incheon, South Korea. The silly season is full of odd-hour golf and this will definitely be an event to get you acclimated with that primetime and middle-of-the-night viewing.

Incheon is 13 hours ahead of the eastern United States, so the broadcast windows are not ideal for Golf Channel and NBC. They’ll get some nice primetime coverage the first couple days before football consumes the weekend, and each day’s matches should end at a relatively reasonable hour for the west coast audience. For the eastern U.S., however, the matches will all run through the middle of the night and end early the following morning, including Sunday’s conclusion sometime around 3 a.m. ET.

The International venue, and the overall lack of momentum in what has become a one-sided competition, has also resulted in far fewer media options this week. There will be no PGA Tour Live streams online and there will be no radio coverage. Golf Channel will have their usual broadcast in the evenings and those will all be simulcast streamed via their LiveExtra service. The Ryder Cup, by comparison, had two separate concurrent broadcasts covering different topics on NBC and Golf Channel, had radio coverage and streaming, and its own app with streaming throughout each session.

NBC and their Comcast sister Golf Channel will have some replays the following day during normal U.S. business hours, but tape-delayed golf (or any sport) isn’t the most appealing thing to watch during football season. With different formats, different numbers of matches, and a double session on Saturday, the start times are all over the place and change each day (full match schedule here). You will need to load up on coffee, or maybe alcohol, to enjoy and get through the four-day competition. Here are all your options: