Golf

NCAA Men’s Golf Championships 2016: Times, TV schedule and live stream

Primetime golf! Match play! Pumping up your school and yelling about how your rival is trash!

Updated May 31, 2016, 12:59 PM UTC

The calendar is flipping to June. Rory, Jordan and Jason are winning tournaments. The U.S. Open is a couple weeks away. Summer’s here and the golf schedule is about to go from zero to 60 real quick.

And now in between Jordan Spieth’s incredible close on Sunday at Colonial and this week’s loaded field at the Memorial, we will get three days of primetime golf. The NCAA men’s championships will get a little bit of shine in what are normally off-days for golf. Last week’s women’s title delivered as compelling a finish as you can get and once again ignited the clamor for more match-play formats on the pro level.

Now the men’s championships enter the spotlight and will get primetime coverage on Golf Channel on Monday through Wednesday. There are 15 schools left entering Monday’s Individual National Championship final round, which also doubles as an eliminator round for the team match play title as well. It’s the usual heavy dose of Pac 12, SEC and Big 12 schools.

The most challenging part of following these NCAA championships is understanding the format and who is playing for what. But once you do, it’s a pretty fun watch, especially given the primetime slot. Monday night’s round is the most difficult to understand. It’s the fourth and final round of a 72-hole stroke-play event that will crown the individual national champion. This individual may come from one of the 15 teams that are still playing, or a solo man whose individual score keeps him in the hunt for that title even if the rest of his team was sent packing. For example, Alabama’s Robby Shelton is tied for fourth heading into the final round of the stroke-play event but his team did not get to that final round because they were 23rd of 30 teams after 54 holes. He still gets to play on for a fourth round. On the team side, the 54-hole cut down takes the field from 30 teams to 15 teams. Monday night’s round will then not only crown an individual winner, but also cut those teams down from 15 to a final eight.

After Monday’s round, it’s a pretty simple eight-team, single-elimination bracket. Individual scores do not matter. It’s just five one-on-one matches between two schools. This format provided the best bit of drama last week with the women, when Washington and Stanford went back and forth in their five matches to decide a team national title. The Huskies won with a hole-out in one match and a near chip-in on the second playoff hole of the final anchor match. It was a pretty nice way to watch golf on what would be an otherwise sleepy Wednesday evening.

Golf Channel has made a big push to add this as a non-PGA Tour event to promote and cover. It’s a different format on odd days and at different times. You’ll also be able to watch all their coverage via their 24/7 simulcast stream. Here are your coverage options for the men’s championships this week: