WGC Bridgestone Invitational 2016: Tee times, pairings for Thursday’s round at Firestone

We’re now in the thick of this crazy summer schedule on the PGA Tour, and this week brings the first major changeup to the rota thanks to those Rio Olympics. The WGC-Bridgestone Invitational is one of the three or four premier events for the PGA Tour, but its prominence is certainly taking a hit this year.

The annual stop at Firestone Country Club in Akron has been pushed up more than month to the July 4 weekend. It would typically fall in early August, the week preceding the year’s final major, the PGA Championship. But August is a complete mess because of the Olympics, so this is the spot it now holds in this manic 2016 schedule. July will now feature this WGC event, the British Open, and the PGA Championship, all clearing the decks for the games in Rio ... which will have a far weaker field than all of them.

The field in Akron is already one of the smallest of the year. These WGCs are no-cut, easy money events loaded up with world rankings points. So, the field is usually just north of 70 players. This year, however, there are just 60 teeing it up in Akron. This is yet another negative side effect from the Olympics. The WGC events are supposed to be jointly held by the different major tours of the world.

These events count as a European Tour event for those players, and obviously a PGA Tour event, as well. But those two tours could not come to an agreement on scheduling, so the Euro Tour went right ahead on its own and kept the historic French Open on this same week. It’s the 100th edition of that event in Paris, and the Euro Tour also offered up double Ryder Cup qualifying points -- and none in Akron -- to entice players to stay over on their Tour.

So, a week where the Tours are often working in concert became one of showdown opposition. That, along with the schedule change and this crazy July sprint, is how you end up with a much smaller field than normal. The PGA Tour already has a ton of flexibility when creating this tee sheet, but now it’s even more wide open. There is no 156-man field like at the U.S. Open that needs to go off two tees from sun-up to sun-down.

The Tour will send them all in threesomes off No. 1 tee over a four-hour window, starting at 10 a.m. ET. The rounds at Firestone also tend to move quickly and are some of the fastest on the PGA Tour all year. You’ll often see rounds that come in under four hours, even when they’re playing as threesomes the first two rounds.

Here’s the full tee sheet for Thursday’s opening round (all times ET):