The PGA Tour’s annual two-week trip to Hawaii provides it with that extremely rare opportunity to program its league in primetime. The Tour doesn’t have that chance any other time in the season. The daylight hours available during the upcoming West Coast swing are so limited that it cannot push the broadcasts into primetime.
Sony Open 2017 live stream: TV schedule, how to watch online, and more
Chiefs-Steelers is fine. But Justin Thomas lighting it up in Hawaii is pretty good too.
There’s an occasional U.S. Open on the West Coast, but that’s not annual and the PGA Tour doesn’t control that event. So these first two weeks in January provide a nice place to put some golf on into the night and change things up for the television audience.
This particular Sunday at the Sony Open, the Tour and Golf Channel were set up to have their own window with few other sports intruding. The NFL divisional games would be clear, with the Cowboys and Packers finishing up well before 8 p.m. ET, which would leave the entire back nine for the final pairing still ahead on the Golf Channel. Then things changed, and this rare break for the PGA Tour was wiped out by the all-powerful NFL.
The rescheduling of Sunday’s AFC divisional game between the Chiefs and Steelers from a 1:05 p.m. ET start to an 8:20 p.m. ET start on NBC was undoubtedly a hit to the Sony Open broadcast. Forecasted ice storms in Kansas City prompted the move earlier in the week. I’m not delusional enough to believe some massive part of that NFL audience would also be into the Sony Open. But it does take away a nice chunk of audience, even if it’s all staying under the same Comcast-owned NBC/Golf Channel roof.
So the NFL primetime game will now definitely take some spotlight away from what will probably be a broadcast of Justin Thomas’ second straight win — and his third in his first five events this season. Thomas has been a fan favorite among close PGA Tour watchers for a couple of years now, but we’re seeing what is likely the breakout season that many expected. The first two weeks of the year in Hawaii don’t necessarily mean you’re going to crush it all season, but Thomas is the kind of talent who can pile up wins in a PGA Tour career and do so at the biggest events in the game.
Breaking 60 in Thursday’s first round was just a fleeting burst of that talent, and he backed it up with two mid-60s rounds that put him 7 shots clear of the field with 18 more holes to play. Thomas would really have to implode, and one of the chasers, likely either Justin Rose or Zach Johnson, would have to catch fire and post a low 60s number to throw a wrench into Thomas’ sweep of the Aloha Swing. Whether it’s a runaway or not, watching a prodigious and burgeoning talent in paradise is worth toggling back and forth from that freezing NFL game.
Here’s the full media schedule for the final round (all times ET):
Sunday’s final round coverage
Television:
6 p.m. to 10 p.m. — Golf Channel
11 p.m. to 3 a.m. (Replay) — Golf Channel
Online streams:
6 p.m. to 10 p.m. — Golf Channel simulcast stream
Radio:
5 p.m. — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)
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