Hero World Challenge 2016: Time, live TV schedule for Tiger Woods and the field on Friday

Golf Channel and the PGA Tour are not in an ideal situation on Friday. There’s one main reason people want to watch the Hero World Challenge this week. Unfortunately, that reason is supposed to tee off in the first group in the second round and play almost half his round before the television broadcast is supposed to go live.

Tiger Woods is in second-to-last place in the Bahamas and that means he and last-place Justin Rose will be in the first pairing of the day. The Hero World Challenge is a small little game of just 18 players so the event decided to re-pair according to score after the first 18 holes instead of the 36-hole mark like most tournaments with full-size fields. So Tiger will tee off at 11:12 p.m. ET, almost two hours before the official second round broadcast comes on the air on Golf Channel.

We got around this problem on Thursday and put down the pitchforks when Golf Channel put every shot of Tiger’s early holes on their pregame show. Woods teed off at Noon and they spent that first hour just showing live look-ins and highlights of his opening tee shot and first few holes from back in the studio. It’s unclear how they’ll cover it now that he’s going another 48 minutes earlier than that and almost two hours prior to that 1 p.m. broadcast start time.

Morning Drive is Golf Channel’s studio show during that 11 a.m. hour on Friday and perhaps they’ll have similar look-ins during that first hour. We should at least get the same coverage of each Tiger shot during that pregame show from Noon to 1 p.m. Tiger should be close to making the turn when the actual tourney broadcast goes live at that point.

The last groups should not finish up until about 4:30 p.m. ET, when the broadcast window ends. But even though this field is loaded with many of the best players in the world, we really only care about the one player in that opening pairing leading things off some 80 minutes prior. There’s a reason this small little event during the offseason is going to draw some of the biggest ratings of the golf year, and it’s Tiger Woods’ return. So let’s find a way to broadcast his entire rounds.

Here are your media options for the second round at Albany:

Noon to 1 p.m. -- Golf Channel pregame show with coverage of Tiger’s start

1 to 4:30 p.m. -- Golf Channel simulcast stream