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

There are just 18 holes left at The Players Championship in what could be one of the more fascinating and wild Sundays ever at TPC Sawgrass. It probably won’t be wild because of the leaderboard -- Jason Day has got this. But it might be chaos because the PGA Tour lost the greens on Saturday, and it might be a challenge to make them much better for the final 18. It was a mess in the third round and the final round can probably just be marginally better before these greens are dug up and replaced next week.

Most players said the Saturday conditions were the toughest they ever played in and the fastest greens they have ever encountered. It’s not awful to watch from your couch. Seeing the best players get confounded and confused by a course that might be unfair or tricked up can be entertaining, if not ideal. The frustrations and drama around it all are fun to follow -- it’s a conflict we don’t get that often in golf, save for the U.S. Open. If it’s just as bad, or gets even worse, on Sunday, then that will be gripping to watch. It’s not you who is playing the six-hour round from hell. Come and go from your couch and stop complaining.

It will all start at 8:20 a.m. ET with the first tee time of Kevin Streelman and Patton Kizzire going off No. 1 tee. This is the first time this week that field will go off in twosomes and all from the first tee. The storms on Friday night disrupted those Saturday plans, and the Tour didn’t even try to re-pair in two; instead, they opted for a relatively late restart of round 2 at 9:15 a.m. and then a two-hour block of tee times off split tees starting just before Noon. Now that we’re all caught up and through 54 holes, we’re back to the normal routine.

The anchor duo of Day and Hideki Matsuyama will feature the best stripe show in the game right now. Day’s bona fides are well established but Matsuyama is just about the best in the world tee-to-green. His 5-under round of 67 was eight shots better than the astronomical field average in the third round. He’s the best option to chase down Day, but it’s a really tough proposition for anyone. Day is four-for-four with the 54-hole lead and about to become the first player since Tiger Woods to win seven times in a 10-month period. So yeah, he’s the best in the world right now and it will take a totally unexpected meltdown on Sunday to stop him from taking the “fifth major.”

Day and Matsuyama will go off last 2:30 p.m. ET. It should be a slower round again with the baked out greens, but because they’re in twosomes and not threes, they should finish up on the 18th at about 7:15 p.m. on NBC. Here’s the full tee sheet for Sunday’s final round: