Golf

How to watch the Valspar Championship live online, TV schedule, radio and more

With the Masters bearing down, the world No. 1 is back at Innisbrook in Tampa to defend his title.

Updated Mar 11, 2016, 12:00 PM UTC

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The unheralded link of the Florida swing is the Valspar Championship. This is the annual stop in Tampa that’s had way too much turnover with title sponsors, so much so that the future of the entire event was in doubt at one point. But there’s now some stability and the course, while it does not have the history or publicity of many other Tour venues, is well regarded by the players and those who actually pay attention to the circuit.

The event also cannot ask for a better defending champion. It was here that Jordan Spieth earned his first win of a five-win year that was among the best in the sport’s history. It was not just the superstar winner, but how he won in that wild playoff against Patrick Reed that made this one of the best tournaments of the 2015 season. Spieth credits his play in late 2014, specifically in Australia and at the Hero World Challenge, for igniting his incredible year. But the Valspar title just a few weeks out from the Masters really got things rolling and set him up for that record week at Augusta. Now he’s back again this year with his form a little off and attempting to downplay the likelihood of a repeat in Tampa.

This does not generate the pomp of the other three stops on the Florida swing. The Honda Classic has become a powerhouse, drawing all the big name players who live nearby in the Palm Beach area. The WGC event at Doral will always get a loaded field because it has an enormous purse ($3.4M more than this week) and free world rankings points. And next week’s stop at Bay Hill boasts the imprimatur of Arnold Palmer, which draws top players that have carved out some history at that Orlando-area stop. It’s hard to get a ton of attention and keep drawing the top names when you’re sandwiched in between all that and with players looking for at least one or two off weeks before Augusta, but Tampa still manages to put together an above-average field and produce drama.

NBC and Golf Channel will continue their split of the coverage but it’s the pretty standard schedule for this week. The hours are not expanded as they have been the previous two weeks, with a three-hour window for the first two rounds and a five-hour split for the weekend rounds. This is when conference tournaments and March Madness start to suck up all the oxygen for these pre-Masters tournaments. The diehards, who praise this Innisbrook Copperhead Course, will be there no matter what and another run from Spieth would certainly put the Valspar on the map with a wider audience. You can watch his opening round on PGA Tour Live early Thursday morning. Here are all your media options for the week:

(all times ET)