2015 Northern Trust Open: Tee times, pairings and a preview for Sunday’s final round

The PGA Tour’s annual West Coast swing comes to a close on what many consider the best venue on the schedule, Riviera. The George Thomas design is the only regular stop in the Los Angeles area, and given that city’s lack of modern majors, the only stop at all. But it’s one of the best tournaments all season, even when Tiger kept passing on his hometown event. Sunday’s final round is set up for another close finish with a leaderboard loaded with talent and big names, both young and old. Here’s a preview and Sunday’s final round schedule.

The Riv is a ball-striker’s paradise where some of the older players can use their course knowledge and not be made obsolete by the young, long hitters. The course is still playing over 7300 yards but every year we see a few throwback players make a run up the leaderboard, and this year several older vets are in the hunt on Sunday.

Fred Couples is usually the one representing the elderly crowd at Riviera. He’s played this tournament every year for 30-plus seasons and will probably play it until he’s 75 -- he knows and loves the course that well and this event loves him that much. Freddy, however, bombed out with a second round 75 and missed the cut.

While Couples may be gone, another aging former star with back troubles has picked up the slack. Retief Goosen, winner of the 2001 and 2004 U.S. Open, holds a two-shot lead after a few amazing rounds with the putter (2.774 strokes gained-putting so far). Goosen started his third round one-putting his first ten holes, but then it looked like his cushion atop the leaderboard would come undone down the stretch.. He bogeyed four of five holes on the back nine, but closed with two red numbers in his last three holes to get back in front by two. A chip-in from the greenside rough at the 16th stopped the bleeding.

The lead will be a precarious position for the 46-year-old coming off major back surgery. He hasn’t been in contention like this on the PGA Tour in some time.

Goosen is not the only elderly player dropping birdies and on the first page of the leaderboard. The most interesting group of the day may be the 12:48 p.m. ET tee time of Vijay Singh, Angel Cabrera, and Jordan Spieth. Vijay has been Champions Tour eligible for a couple years now, but he’s still plugging away, with limited success, on the PGA Tour. Singh has 61 Tour victories to his name and little left to prove, especially at these weekly non-major events. But that’s never really been how he’s operated, and given the recent PED mess and legal fight with the Tour, he likely wants to keep showing up every week and hanging in with the best in the world (and also be a thorn in Tim Finchem’s side).

Singh won his first PGA Tour event in June of 1993. In July of that year, Spieth was born. So this group certainly has an old vs. young dynamic to it. Cabrera is also in his mid-40s and won his first major championship before Spieth could drive.

Spieth is off to another strong start and will be a face the Tour markets all season. He’s got two top 10s in his last three events, and one new commercial. He’s four shots back of Goosen so he’s got a lot of ground to cover, but it would be surprising if this isn’t yet another top 10 for the 21-year-old. He’s comfortable at Riviera and even though he may not have the years of course knowledge like the older guys, he did win an NCAA title on these greens in 2012.

That old vs. young threesome may be the most interesting group on the tee sheet, but the one with the most firepower is playing right behind it. Dustin Johnson is arguably the most talented American player and Jim Furyk is arguably America’s most consistent pro. They will play together, along with James Hahn, at 12:59 p.m. ET. There’s lots of talent at the bottom of the tee sheet, but these two together make up the most loaded tee time.

DJ is back in contention at Riviera again, playing as if nothing happened in the intervening 12 months from his second-place finish here in 2014. After his six-month layoff, either a personal leave of absence or a drug suspension depending on who you ask, Johnson missed the cut at Torrey Pines. But that sloppiness was quickly shored up and he got hot on Sunday at Pebble Beach, a place where he’s won twice, to climb up the leaderboard and post a top 5 finish. Now it looks like the old DJ is back and there’s no real sign of rust in his game. On Saturday, he destroyed a drive 353 yards, carrying the ball over some trees and playing the course in a way that no one else even considered.

Chasing the 54-hole lead may be the best spot for Furyk, who we saw fail to close yet again with the 54-hole lead last week at Pebble Beach. He’s now 0 for 10 in that spot since early 2011 (by comparison, Rory McIlroy has closed out 5 of 8 54-hole leads since then). Despite constant contention and all those Sunday leads, Furyk has not won a PGA Tour event since he took that 2010 TOUR Championship and the $10 million FedExCup. That drought notwithstanding, he’s still been one of the top two or three American players in the last two years and it looks like he’ll be on the first page of the leaderboard again all 2015 season.

The par-4 10th at Riviera is probably the best par-4 on the entire PGA Tour schedule, and maybe the single best hole overall. It measures right around 300 yards -- sometimes it’s set up just over 300, and other times it plays just over 280 yards. That’s an easily drivable distance for almost every PGA Tour pro. The only problem is the green is extremely small and narrow, super quick, and protected by bunkers and spots that put you in jail. It’s a classic risk-reward hole that, given its distance, should not be too difficult for the best players in the world. And yet, whether they choose to lay up or rip a drive up around the green, carnage happens.

In 2013, John Merrick, who won the event, called it one of the “great par-4s we play.” Charlie Beljan, who lost to Merrick in a playoff on the hole, denigrated it and said “they might as well put a windmill out there.” It’s that divisive and punishing and it’s an extremely fun hole (unless you’re one of the players like Scott Piercy, who pin balled four straight shots back and forth from the bunker to wreck his tournament)

This will be the final Sunday with Jim Nantz on the call until we get to Augusta. CBS takes a break from golf to cover college basketball and NBC takes over for the Florida swing (and two pre-Masters stops in Texas). Golf Channel will have the early final round coverage from 1 to 2:30 p.m. ET and CBS will close it out from 3 to 6 p.m. There will also be four different streaming options available, including one dedicated to the mess at the famous 10th hole. All the coverage options can be found here.

Here’s the full tee sheet for Sunday’s final round (all times ET):