WGC Cadillac Championship 2015: Tee times, pairings for Thursday’s round at Doral

The Masters rapidly approaches and this week’s PGA Tour stop is probably the best event to most closely approximate the talent at Augusta. Technically, the WGC-Cadillac Championship is deeper than the group that will play the season’s first major. Both feature smaller, exclusive fields, but this week is the first time that the entire top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings have played at the same tournament since the 2012 PGA Championship.

It’s hard to really pick out featured groups when there’s so many heavy hitters here, but the headliner is obviously world No. 1 Rory McIlroy. He won the last WGC event he played in back in August at Firestone, but is coming off a missed cut at the Honda Classic last week. It was a tiny blow for Rory, who opened the year with a win and a second place result over on the Euro Tour. The two-day stay at the Honda is likely nothing more than a blip in the trend of McIlroy staying as the game’s most dominant player, and he’s the favorite again this week at Doral.

McIlroy will start his week alongside Bubba Watson and Henrik Stenson at 11:33 a.m. ET on the 10th tee. Those are the top three players in the world rankings, and most of the tee sheet follows from there according to the current OWGR. Of course, McIlroy is a clear No. 1 right now and the distance down to No. 2 Bubba is a long way.

Aside from Rory’s group, maybe the most intriguing threesome is the Jordan Spieth-Justin Rose-Sergio Garcia group. Those are three world-class ball strikers who will all be in the mix on at least one major championship leaderboard this season. They’re right after the McIlroy group at 11:44 a.m. ET

The WGC events offer the Tour a ton of flexibility when it comes to scheduling. It’s a small, exclusive field of just 71 players (Tiger Woods, even if he were healthy, would not have qualified based on his world ranking). There is no cut and there is no need for a morning and afternoon wave to try and squeeze 140 to 150 players through the same 18-hole course in one day. Instead, the Tour opts to send them off in groups of three from split tees so the entire field is on the course at the same time. That will change on the weekend, when there should be rolling twosomes like most normal Saturdays and Sundays on Tour.

With the entire field condensed into a two-hour window, Golf Channel will have their pick of stars to show for their afternoon broadcast. They’re set to come on the air at 1 p.m. and carry coverage until 6 p.m. or the conclusion of the round.

Typically, the pace of play is quick at the WGC events. The past few years at Firestone, which is the other WGC stroke play tourney in the States, many rounds came in under four hours, which is extremely quick for the Tour. Doral’s redesigned Blue Monster course under architect Gil Hanse punished the players last year, but that was largely due to some windy conditions and nearly brand new greens that were almost unfairly hard. Those have likely settled and the course shouldn’t be as difficult, hopefully alleviating the pace of play. Expect to see at least the back nine of Rory’s round.

One interesting thing the PGA Tour and its new SkratchTV network are offering before the round is a live range camera, where fans can Tweet and Facebook their preference for who they want to watch stripe balls on the Doral range.

Between Rory, Adam Scott, Phil Mickelson, and all the other pretty-to-funky swings, this might be cool way to watch the players warm up earlier in the day. That begins at 10 a.m. ET.

Here’s the full tee sheet for the opening round: