The Players Championship 2015: Tee times, pairings for Thursday’s round

The single best tee time of the PGA Tour season will go off Thursday morning at The Players Championship. Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy have dominated world golf since last July, winning majors and ascending to world No. 1 and 2 -- the first time the top two were age 25 and under. The Spieth-McIlroy hype has crescendoed over the last month, with the 21-year-old American joining the battle with that record-setting Masters win. So, at their marquee event, the PGA Tour, they didn’t mess around and grouped the two together for the first two days at TPC Sawgrass.

McIlroy, Spieth and Jason Day, another elite talent under 30 and in the top 10 of the world rankings, will go off at 8:39 a.m. ET in the first round. McIlroy has a mixed history with the Pete Dye designed Stadium Course. He’s posted a couple top 10s, but also had some of his worst showings in his young career at this course. He was barely competitive his first three times in this event, and even opted to pass on it one year -- angering everyone associated with the stateside Tour. He’s got a huge driving distance advantage over Spieth, but Sawgrass is one of the few courses left in pro golf that can inhibit that length. If you bomb it, but bomb it off the fairway, you’re going to get punished. Most venues these guys can just bomb-and-gouge their way past the shorter, sometimes more precise players. Rory can do it all, but he’ll need to keep those 330-yard drives in the short stuff this week.

Spieth has only played this event once and it went pretty damn well. He played 58 holes at least year’s Players before he made a bogey, which is astounding given the penal nature of mishit tee shots and water trouble on almost every hole. He started Sunday with the lead but things came undone in his final round. It came just a month after he sputtered in the Sunday final pairing at the Masters, and a few critics popped up citing his back-to-back Sunday struggles at two of the game’s premier events. Of course, he was just 20 years old and playing for the first time at those events. Now he comes back a year later with a dominant Masters win and probably as the hottest player in the world since December.

While that trio is the marquee tee time of the day, they’ll play most of their round before the TV coverage goes live in the afternoon at 1 p.m. You can still watch on a PGATour.com featured group stream if you need a diversion from work in the morning. Then on the afternoon side of the draw, Tiger Woods will take over and be much of the focus of Golf Channel’s broadcast. Woods tees off with Adam Scott and defending champ Martin Kaymer at 1:49 p.m. ET. Woods is also defending a title of sorts, given that he wasn’t able to play here last year following his 2013 win at Sawgrass. That Masters performance was totally unexpected, but he still hit several loose shots from tee to green that would make him a non-factor if repeated at Sawgrass. His round will be fascinating to watch and we may learn just what kind of summer is ahead for the 14-time major winner.

Those are obviously the two top tee times on each side of the draw, but The Players is reputed for having the deepest field of the year. There are big name players up and down the tee sheet. Here are all your tee times for the opening round. All times are ET: