2016 British Open tee times, pairings for Thursday and Friday

Tee times and pairings for the 145th edition of The Open Championship are now out, and as you’d expect, there’s an international flavor in all the marquee threesomes. The R&A opted not to slam all the big names into the same group, instead spreading them across the tee sheet. There will be no Jason Day-Rory McIlroy-Jordan Spieth power trio at Royal Troon.

World No. 1 Day will play with reigning Masters champion Danny Willett and USA patriot and Olympics commit Rickie Fowler. Day’s been over in Scotland all weekend, getting in two full practice rounds at a Troon course he’s never played in competition. We all remember Spieth juuuust missing the playoff by a shot last year at St. Andrews, ending his long-shot run at the Grand Slam. But Day was right there with him, playing together in the Sunday final round and also finishing a couple revolutions short on the 18th green of the playoff. He will go at 4:25 a.m. ET on Thursday with Willett and Fowler.

Spieth draws Shane Lowry and Justin Rose for the first two rounds. It will be the first time this year that he will not start a major alongside Bryson DeChambeau, which is probably a relief for Spieth. Those two combined from some brutally slow rounds at both Augusta and Oakmont, with the problem becoming particularly acute last month at Oakmont. DeChambeau was not qualified for this Open -- he did originally have a spot via his U.S. Amateur win last summer, but forfeited that when he turned pro after the Masters. Spieth will start his championship at 4:03 a.m. ET on Thursday.

McIlroy will play in the same cluster of tee times as Day and Spieth, all within about a 30-minute window early on Thursday morning in the States. Hideki Matsuyama and Bubba Watson will play with the 2014 champion golfer of the year, who is “defending” in a way after missing last year’s Open with that nasty ankle injury. Rory, Bubba and Hideki are a ball-striking show worth watching from start to finish.

The player most consider the favorite, last month’s U.S. Open champion Dustin Johnson, is in the cluster opposite Day-Spieth-Rory. He’ll start at 9:04 a.m. ET on Thursday and be the primary focus of the morning Golf Channel broadcast back in the U.S. DJ is with Martin Kaymer and Scotsman Russell Knox.

The unique perk of The Open tee sheet is that everyone always plays off No. 1 tee. The daylight hours this time of year in Scotland allow for play deep into the night, often past 10 p.m. local. It would be impossible for the U.S. Open and PGA Championship to send their 156-man fields all off one tee on Thursday and Friday before the cut is made, but it’s tradition at The Open. So the tee sheet runs for almost 10 hours on No. 1, beginning at 1:35 a.m. ET (6:35 a.m. local). The last group off starts at 11:16 a.m. ET, or 4:16 p.m. in Scotland.

Colin Montgomerie, who earned a spot in the field during the qualifying rounds in Britain last month, will have the honor of hitting the first tee shot. Monty is a proud Scot and a Royal Troon member. He’ll be in that first 1:35 a.m. group with Luke Donald and Marc Leishman.

Here’s the full tee sheet for the first two rounds at Troon (ALL TIMES ET):