The Players Championship 2016: Tee times, pairings for Thursday’s round

The deepest field in golf gets it going just after dawn on Thursday at TPC Sawgrass. There are 144 players in the field at the 2016 Players Championship, and just about every top gun, save for Tiger Woods, is back at the Stadium Course.

Whatever you think of the event, the quality of the field is inarguable. You can throw your barb about the course being gimmicky or untraditional. You can scoff at the notion that the PGA Tour might be able to elbow this into some “major championship” category one day. That comes with the territory and history of this event.

But the field remains as good as ever and the PGA Tour obliges our desires to see them all play together through the first two days. It was at this event last year that we got right to it, putting Rory McIlroy together with Jordan Spieth, just a month after Spieth set records at Augusta National and emerged as a potential rival and contemporary threat to Rory’s throne. The Tour does not mess around or get cute.

This year, Spieth is playing his first event since that Sunday meltdown at the Masters. He was peppered with questions about Augusta on Wednesday during his first press conference, and he knew it was coming. But now, after one of the longest breaks in his career, he’s back inside the ropes and will tee it up with world No. 1 Jason Day and Branden Grace at 8:43 a.m. ET. Spieth and Day have played a ton over the last year. They’re grouped together on purpose and by circumstance, with both shooting to the top of leaderboards regularly on the weekend last season. Day has not played particularly well here and Spieth missed the cut last year, so a steady start that navigates the many dangers and big numbers at TPC Sawgrass would be critical.

In the afternoon half of the draw, the marquee group consists of three of the most exquisite bombers in the history of the game. McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, and Bubba Watson will go off No. 1 at 1:58 p.m., a full hour into the afternoon TV coverage on Golf Channel. Those three, and throw in Day, are the elite power hitters in golf and they will launch rocket after rocket through the first two rounds -- even on a course that tends to mitigate that distance advantage. In addition to the Rory-Bubba-DJ group, defending champ Rickie Fowler is also out late and will be a focus of the broadcast. He tees off with Adam Scott and Matt Kuchar at 1:36 p.m.

The weather is supposed to be perfect for most of the weekend, and with the days getting longer there should be no real problem getting all 144 players through 18 holes on Thursday. They will be out in groups of three off split tees to facilitate that. Here’s the full tee sheet for the opening round: