The the hype and anticipation around the 2015 Masters centered largely around the return of Tiger Woods to golf. This is the biggest golf tournament of the year and it can sell itself, but Tiger’s involvement, especially with so much mystery around his game, amplified everything to a new level.
No, you can’t watch Tiger Woods live at the Masters on Friday
After a a two-month hiatus out of public view and full of mystery surrounding his game, Tiger may only get two rounds at Augusta this week. And you’re not going to be able to watch one of them.
You would expect that, given the demand for Tiger Woods and every shot he makes, the biggest tournament of the year would actually let you watch him play? Nope.
The Masters is notoriously restrictive about how many hours of coverage their media partners can provide. The TV deal is one of the most unique in sports, operating on a one-year contract with CBS every year since 1956. They started by showing only the final four holes, and weren’t allowed to show the front nine until the early 90s! Clifford Roberts and some of the early cultivators of the Masters always felt too much TV exposure would take away from the event, and also hurt attendance. While coverage has expanded a bit over the years, that tradition still holds and both ESPN and CBS show far less golf than at the other three major championships.
ESPN will not come on the air until 3 p.m. on Friday, a good 4.5 hours after Tiger Woods tees off. Woods will go with Jamie Donaldson and Jimmy Walker at 10:30 a.m. ET and may have a hole left when ESPN goes live. But that's about all you will see live on TV.
As an alternative to the limited TV, Masters.com offers a good variety of streaming options and were actually at the forefront (in golf) of doing so when online streaming became feasible. There are two separate featured groups streams, showing three groups on Friday. But Tiger’s tee time is not among those six groups, a mystifying omission.
There are no repeats in the featured groups stream for the first two rounds, and Tiger was there on Thursday when he actually played the majority of his round during the ESPN coverage window.
So there were multiple ways to watch most of Tiger’s round on Thursday, but Friday’s round will be played in obscurity.
It’s obviously frustrating, especially because we haven’t seen him play at all the past two months and are so curious about where his game is at these days. His tournament may come to an end Friday without anyone getting to watch half of his golf at the biggest event of the year. What the hell are we doing?
There will be a few brief stretches you can catch Tiger live on the Amen Corner stream and the Nos. 15/16 stream. That will cover five holes of his round and he should arrive around 1 p.m. at Masters.com. Anything else before that and you're out of luck.
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