At the midpoint of the Hero World Challenge, Tiger Woods will have his latest tee time of the week. That’s good news for the Big Cat fans because the Hero re-pairs according to score after each and every round. Tiger’s 4-under 68, which included an electrifying front-nine 31, was good enough to put the host in a tie for fifth place. That means he’ll be out in the third-to-last group of this small, little 18-man invitational on the weekend.
Hero World Challenge 2017: Tiger Woods’ tee time, plus full pairings for Saturday
Tiger Woods is in the hunt on the weekend. Forget that it’s a lower stakes, small-field event. It’s time to lock in on the Hero World Challenge.
Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Tiger has had plenty of early tee times in this event in recent years but Saturday’s 12:53 p.m. ET time with Hideki Matusyama breaks that trend. Tiger’s always the focus of this event, especially after a long layoff like this year. But it could sometimes get uncomfortable if he were out there chopping it by himself in the very first tee time of the day. Matsuyama is the defending champ here, and one of the premiere young talents in the game. It’s likely he’ll go down as the greatest Asian-born player ever. And yet, he might as well not be out there on Saturday.
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Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
This entire tournament became a solo show when Tiger committed to play. The field is loaded — he’s got eight of the top 10 in the world, which is remarkable given the field is only 18 players. But so little of the other players’ shots matter — this is not some high stakes event or a major. The only purpose it serves this week is to watch Tiger play competitively again and see what, if anything, could be coming later for the 14-time major winner.
Golf Channel and NBC will split the duties on the weekend. It’s rare to have the network get involved with golf coverage this time of year but the power of Tiger will do that. Golf Channel will have the early round coverage from noon to 2:30 p.m. ET, and then NBC will take over until 5 p.m. The good thing about an 18-man field playing in a lower stakes event is that the pace of play will always be brisk. These rounds have come in consistently under four hours so expect Tiger to be done well before 5 p.m.
Here’s the full tee sheet for Saturday’s third round at the Hero World Challenge:
11:47 a.m.: Daniel Berger, Brooks Koepka
11:58 a.m.: Alex Noren, Kevin Kisner
12:09 p.m.: Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson
12:20 p.m.: Kevin Chappell, Justin Thomas
12:31 p.m.: Rickie Fowler, Patrick Reed
12:42 p.m.: Francesco Molinari, Matt Kuchar
12:53 p.m.: Tiger Woods, Hideki Matsuyama
1:04 p.m.: Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose
1:15 p.m.: Jordan Spieth, Charley Hoffman
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