Golf

Farmers Insurance Open live stream: How to watch online, TV coverage and more

Tiger Woods returns to a place where he’s won eight times in his career but this time his game is a must-watch mess.

Feb 5, 2015, 3:03 PM UTC

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The trainwreck that is Tiger Woods current golf game has been almost as fascinating to watch as all those years of runaway dominating wins. It’s much more sad and confounding, no doubt, but to see a player so crippled with an inability to perform one of the game’s basic tasks, chip a golf ball, is a must-watch occasion on what had been a sluggish start to the PGA Tour season.

Tiger returns this week to a venue he’s owned throughout his career, Torrey Pines and the Farmers Insurance Open. Woods has won this event seven times and also won a major championship, the 2008 U.S. Open, at Torrey’s South Course. This iteration of Tiger, however, is something we’ve never seen before and he enters the week with the longest odds in his entire pro career to win a tournament. It’s more likely we see Tiger, at a place he knows so well, shoot over 80 than break 70. Less than a week ago, Woods was blading, chunking, and skulling shots all over Scottsdale on his way to a last-place finish on an easy course. Even if there is a fix and something to figure out, he hasn’t had the time to do it. It will likely be ugly again this week and it will be a challenge to make the cut.

If Tiger's stay is truncated again to just two days, he may be able to sneak out of town without the TV broadcasts catching all of the carnage. Tiger will always have cameras following his every shot, but Woods will play most of Thursday's round on the North Course and before the broadcast window on Golf Channel. Most of the CBS and GC TV equipment is set up on the South Course, which hosts three of the four rounds. So coverage of the first two days is generally focused on the players at the more renowned South, with cameras scattered around the North for occasional look-ins. Tiger's Friday round will be on the South Course and later in the afternoon during the Golf Channel window, but Thursday's loop around the North may be done largely out of view of the cameras. That may be for the best based on reports of Tiger's game on the course at the pro-am Wednesday.

My god, Golf Channel goes live with Tiger firing off a hosel rocket on Torrey range https://t.co/jx2erlqsrU
— Brendan Porath (@BrendanPorath) February 4, 2015

With Tiger out early on the North Course, the headliner of the broadcast will be Phil Mickelson. The Tour will almost always put those two on opposite sides of the draw, and they’ve done it here for the second week in a row after both missed the cut in Phoenix. Phil goes out at 1:40 p.m. ET on the South Course, so a majority of his round will be played during the 3 to 7 p.m. Golf Channel broadcast. One tee time ahead of Phil is Dustin Johnson, who tees it up for the first time in six months following a suspension and/or leave of absence for personal issues.

Tiger may have five or six holes left when Golf Channel goes live at 3 p.m., but it’s Mickelson and DJ who will likely be the focus of the coverage on Thursday. Here are all your media options for the opening round at Torrey (all times ET).

UPDATE: Tee times have been delayed one hour so far this morning as the usual marine layer fog has descended over Torrey Pines, so Tiger Woods should have more of his round fall during the Golf Channel coverage window than we expected.

Update No. 2: After multiple delays, it appears we’ll try to get things started at 2:40 p.m. ET.