How to watch the 2015 WGC Cadillac Match Play online, TV schedule and more

The next couple months will offer golf watchers that rarest of coverage options -- world class golf in prime time. At this point in the year, the PGA Tour and majors schedule is firmly rooted in the south, East Coast, and Midwest. The West Coast swing runs through the first two months of the year, but after that the top tour in the world almost never comes back. But with the U.S. Open in the Seattle area and the overhauled WGC Match Play in a new week at a new venue in San Francisco, two of the top events with the deepest fields will be broadcast largely in prime time back in the eastern United States.

The U.S. Open occasionally drops in on the West Coast in the middle of June and they’ve started pushing for more prime time coverage in recent years. But the Match Play and PGA Tour getting TV coverage at 10 p.m. never happens. But that’s what we’ll get for the first three days of round-robin pool play at this year’s event. Golf Channel will have the coverage from TPC Harding Park, which takes over for the old February stop at the Dove Mountain course in Tucson -- a venue that was always panned by players and media, and rated among the least-liked on the annual PGA Tour rota.

In addition to the venue change and the date change, the entire format is new this year. It used to be a basic single elimination 64-man bracket, just like the NCAA Tournament. But the issue with that is so many of the top golfers were gone by Wednesday afternoon. Match Play is much more unpredictable than a No. 1 seed vs. 16th-seeded NCAA basketball game. Rory McIlroy or Tiger Woods could easily lose to the No. 64 player in the world, especially in such a fickle format.

Players were flying in from all over the world for just one day of golf, you were losing big names and there was just less golf to feature and watch as the week progressed. Match Play is an awesome format and the pros should play it more often, but there were drawbacks and dangers when it came to TV coverage.

But this year, the 64 players will play in four-man round-robin pools. That guarantees every player three matches from Wednesday through Friday, before the winner of each of the 16 pools advances to a single elimination Sweet 16 bracket on the weekend. That’s a dramatic change and improvement for TV. So, Wednesday won’t be do-or-die like it was in the past, but it will still be critical to open with a point in your individual four-man pool standings.

Each of the top 16 players in the official world golf rankings were slotted in as the “leaders” of a respective pool, while the other three players in the pool were randomly drawn on Monday. The top two players in the world are both here and both should get plenty of run during the prime time broadcast. Rory McIlroy doesn’t tee off in his match against Jason Dufner until 5:30 p.m. ET, while Jordan Spieth tees off against Mikko Ilonen at 2:50 p.m. ET. The start of Spieth’s match won’t be shown with Golf Channel coming on the air at 4 p.m. ET, but a majority should still fall within the coverage window.

Even with this once-a-year format and an internationally loaded field, the coverage options are fairly limited this week. The TV broadcasts are expanded from the normal three and four hour windows to a six-hour broadcast each of the first three days. But there are no streaming options outside of the simulcast stream offered through GC and NBC’s LiveExtra service. For a WGC event, PGATour.com usually has a featured groups or featured holes stream you can watch in the morning, before TV goes live, and throughout the evening concurrent with the broadcast. But not this week.

Here are your media options for the first day of matches:

4 to 10 p.m. -- Golf Channel

11 p.m. to 5 a.m. -- Replay on Golf Channel

4 to 10 p.m. -- Golf Channel simulcast stream