PGA Championship 2016 TV schedule and coverage for Sunday’s round

Law & Order fans are going to be upset on Sunday morning. TNT had blocked out a nice six-hour marathon of 1997 episodes for their easy Sunday viewing before PGA Championship coverage went live. But the mess that has turned into the 2016 PGA has pushed TNT’s original broadcast up two hours to 9 a.m. ET.

That’s still a good two hours after the restart of the third round at Baltusrol. That restart includes the very beginning of the third round for the leaders. The last five groups have yet to tee off and will start rolling off No. 1 from 7 to 7:40 a.m. in what was supposed to be the prime Saturday block on CBS.

Saturday became a hellshow for the PGA as the horn blew at 2:15 p.m. to suspend play and then the rain and lightning never relented. That prompted critiques concerning why, given the forecast that everyone had, they did not send the entire field off in groups of three off split tees early Saturday morning. The result would have been those leaders either totally finished with their round or just a hole or two left to play ... instead of still waiting 40 minutes just to tee off.

So TNT will move things up two hours and get some consequential golf. Typically they’re showing players who are out of it during their early three-hour block. The rounds on the course have no real impact on the top of the leaderboard, so they follow a few big names, do some PGA promos and lighthearted stuff. Now they’ll get an expanded broadcast with pretty much every top name in the field and leader out on the course. We’ll give them credit for coming on the air early, but it should have been a no-brainer and they would have been flayed if they opted to keep their Law & Order programming running.

In addition to the earlier TV, the PGA.com streams will also start running earlier than originally scheduled. The marquee groups stream will be up and running at 8 a.m. ET as opposed to the planned 11 a.m. Henrik Stenson and Martin Kaymer will be on one marquee group stream, while Jordan Spieth and Yuta Ikeda will be on the other stream.

A caveat to this updated schedule is that more lightning storms and heavy rain are supposed to hammer Baltusrol from the very start of Sunday’s round. This may be another entire washout of a day, in which case we’re just watching footage from last year’s PGA Championship. We’re at the mercy of Mother Nature, and right now, it’s looking like a Monday finish, at best.

Here’s your tentative Sunday coverage plan (all times Eastern):

8 a.m. to 7 p.m. -- Marquee groups on PGA.com and on mobile via PGA Championship app

9 a.m. to 7 p.m. -- TV simulcast stream on PGA.com and on mobile via PGA Championship app