2016 Hyundai Tournament of Champions: Tee times, pairings for Sunday’s final round

The annual PGA Tour opener in Maui always faces a challenge carving out some larger interest on a weekend dominated by the NFL playoffs and NCAA title game. They have moved the schedule around, from late Sunday finishes to early Monday finishes before the CFB title game, and now back to a primetime Sunday conclusion in 2016. Golf is not really on the mind of a mostly frozen continental U.S., so it’s typically the already-converted who tune in for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions, which signals the end of the PGA Tour’s offseason.

This year, however, this event has some juice thanks to world No. 1 Jordan Spieth. Even though this is an amazing destination for early January, the best players in the world don’t always make the trip out to the middle of the Pacific. The Euros, like Rory McIlroy, often skip it and choose to start their year in the Middle East. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson regularly passed on it in recent years. When you’ve made millions and traveled everywhere on Earth playing golf, I guess the New Year’s trip to Kapalua starts to lose its appeal?

Spieth said this week that he plans to always play this opener, which is open only to those who won a PGA Tour event from the prior 12 months. It’s certainly a tournament that has suited him well -- in seven rounds, he’s always finished the day in either first or second on the leaderboard. He cruises into Sunday with a commanding 5-shot cushion that probably has the rest of this uncharacteristically deep field feeling frustrated and resigned.

In the past, the PGA Tour has tried to dodge the NFL playoffs altogether and push this to a Monday finish right before the college title game kicked off back on the mainland. That plan created its own set of challenges, and so now we’re back to a late Sunday finish, well after the final Wild Card game is done. Spieth will tee off at 6 p.m. ET and should be putting out on the 18th green just before 10 p.m. -- the rounds in this limited 32-man field have moved quickly, even though the course can be a bear to get around when walking.

It’s hard to see anyone pulling off a chasedown of the top player in the game, but this is a course where a 10-under, or even 11-under round, is available. Brooks Koepka, one of those young bombers who’s expected to push Spieth in the coming years, posted a 10-under 63 on Saturday that featured six straight birdies at one point on the opening nine. Patrick Reed, the defending champ, is six shots back and is also one of the natural picks to go low on this track to try and get back in the fight with Spieth. Reed pulled off a late chasedown of Jimmy Walker last year, and zipped past Spieth in Thursday’s opening round with an amazing 3-under stretch on Kapalua’s last two holes.

The problem so far for those chasers is that Spieth is giving no quarter. He’s made just one bogey and even after Koepka’s ridiculous 10-under round, Spieth’s lead from the 36-hole mark to the 54-hole make actually increased by a shot. The chasers need Spieth, the most consistent and unrelenting player in the game right now, to somehow implode on a course that he’s carved up even with his less-than-best stuff. It’s unlikely, but at least he’s got two of his top contemporaries there with a shot late Sunday in primetime. This should be an especially good show for this event and a good way to cap the weekend.

Here’s the full tee sheet for Sunday’s final round (all times ET):