Friday presents another instance of something that’s been all too common for Tiger Woods in recent years -- an early tee time. This one is far more excusable because it comes in an 18-man field and Tiger has not played in some 466 days. So it was no surprise he finished his opening round in 17th place, even though he threw away the round over the final three holes n Thursday and could have been right in the middle of the pack.
Tiger Woods’ tee time, pairings for Hero World Challenge Round 2
Tiger is in second-to-last place at his Hero World Challenge and that means another early tee time.
Christian Petersen/Getty Images
The Hero World Challenge is such a small event that they immediately start re-pairing the field according to score after the first round. There’s obviously no need for different waves of tee times. They set up nine twosomes over 80 minutes all four rounds and are re-paired by the second round, the worst scores going out first. That means Woods is out in the first group of the day with Justin Rose, the gold medalist who’s battling through back troubles and really only playing because he’s a local Albany resident and wants to support the event.
Tiger and Rose will go at 11:12 a.m. ET on Friday afternoon, presenting a bit of a problem for Golf Channel’s broadcast. The coverage is not supposed to start until 1 p.m. ET, almost two hours after Tiger tees off in the second round. That wasn’t a problem on Thursday because Golf Channel did a good job accommodating the obvious demand of those wanting to see his every shot and decided to show his first few opening holes right from the first tee shot during their “pregame” show. Their Morning Drive program is supposed to be on during that 11 a.m. hour so here’s hoping they do more of the same and informally show his shots and highlights even though it’s not technically yet the broadcast window.
The final pairing of J.B. Holmes and Hideki Matsuyama will tee off at 12:40 p.m. ET, setting up a second round finish at about 4:30 p.m. The small field size and twosomes obviously help speed up the pace of play and the rounds on Thursday usually came in around four hours. These guys aren’t exactly grinding over a silly season event with limited stakes, even if there’s a nice $3.5 million purse still on the table. In the same vein, this week is really all about watching Tiger’s every shot and movement so the eight groups after that first tee time are all secondary.
Here’s the full tee sheet for Friday’s second round (all times ET):
11:12 a.m.: -- Tiger Woods, Justin Rose
11:23 a.m.: -- Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka
11:34 a.m.: -- Brandt Snedeker, Zach Johnson
11:45 a.m.: -- Emiliano Grillo, Bubba Watson
11:56 a.m.: -- Russell Knox, Jimmy Walker
12:07 p.m.: -- Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth
12:18 p.m.: -- Matt Kuchar, Louis Oosthuizen
12:29 p.m.: -- Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson
12:40 p.m.: -- J.B. Holmes, Hideki Matsuyama
See More:
