Golf

How to watch the WGC Bridgestone Invitational live online, TV schedule, radio and more

A viewing guide for one of the PGA Tour’s premier events.

Jun 30, 2016, 1:00 PM UTC

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The South Course at Firestone gets mixed reviews, but the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational was always a must-play event for the best players in the world. The WGCs are the top events on the PGA Tour, save for The Players, and there’s just too much easy money and free world rankings points to pass them up and take the week off. The WGC-Bridgestone also had a nice slot on the schedule, always falling in early August the week before the PGA Championship. So everyone would show up, the field would be loaded and it would be a perfect lead-in to the season’s final major.

That has all been thrown off this year thanks to the Olympics, which will include golf for the first time in 112 years. The August schedule looks nothing like the traditional lineup and now both this WGC event and the PGA will be crammed into a July sprint that will also include the British Open in its usual spot on the schedule. Two majors and a WGC in one month is not ideal for schedule balance, but that’s where we are thanks to the Rio games, which look less and less appealing on the golf side as they draw closer.

The hosts in Akron probably didn’t love this new Fourth of July weekend date, but it got even worse when the PGA Tour and European Tour could not come to terms on the calendar. The WGCs are supposed to be jointly held by all the major tours of the world, with those two being the biggest and most important. But they could not agree to the right date, and the European Tour refused to move the French Open, one of its stronger events that is also in its 100th year. So they kept it opposite the Bridgestone and offered up extra Ryder Cup qualifying points to keep their players over in Europe, and none at Firestone. The showdown and inability to come to terms on a schedule that would put all the best in the world at this WORLD Golf Championship is an embarrassment for all involved, and also another negative strike for including golf in the Olympics.

So Rory McIlroy, who won this event the last time he played it, is not here along with a few other Euros. The field is also just 61 players deep, down about 10 or so from the normal size. But it’s still a WGC, so most of the big names are going to show up and be there on PGA Tour Live’s featured groups streams. The small field means tee times do not start until 10 a.m. ET, and that’s when PGA Tour Live will come on the air for the first two rounds. But they will spend almost two hours each day providing coverage from the range and the opening holes before those big names for their stream, like Jason Day, Phil Mickelson, Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson, get going. On the weekend, the Tour’s streaming service will offer featured holes coverage for the entire day.

Golf Channel will also have expanded coverage of the first two rounds, coming on the air at 1:30 p.m. ET each day. They would typically have just a three-hour coverage window for most PGA Tour events, but they’ll be live for five hours on both Thursday and Friday. The entire field should be on the course at some point during that expanded window and, as always, they will simulcast stream those broadcasts.

Here are all your media options for all four days in Akron: