Hero World Challenge 2017: Tiger Woods’ tee time, plus full pairings for Sunday

We came back to reality on Saturday at the Hero World Challenge, where Tiger Woods tumbled down the leaderboard with an ugly front-nine 40. There were going to be hiccups and ugly moments, even entire ugly rounds. This was one of them — this is just who Tiger is right now, especially with so few competitive starts in the last three years.

The playing conditions on Saturday were rough not just for Tiger but for the whole field, as the scoring average went up a full three strokes. There was not going to be any outward 31 no matter how well Tiger played on Saturday, and he was sloppy in the tougher conditions. His distance control was off, his driver was more erratic, his chipping was suspect, and the putts didn’t fall. When he hit good or average shots, he caught some bad breaks and when he hit bad ones, they were really bad.

Winning was never really the goal this week and it wasn’t realistic, despite that momentary lead on Friday afternoon. Staying healthy for four rounds and not looking like an abject disaster were the goal. He’s 10 shots back of leader Charley Hoffman so we won’t be entertaining any fantasies of him winning on Sunday. The broadcast mentioned that at points in Round 2 but you won’t get any of that during Sunday’s coverage. Let’s just guide the ship home without a wreck and maybe roll in a couple birdies on the way.

Tiger will play with the same partner that started the week on Thursday, his South Florida buddy Justin Thomas. The two have become close playing friendly games down in Jupiter. The reigning player of the year is a pretty tough colleague to measure yourself against right off the bat following 300 days away from the game, but Tiger held his own against Thomas on Thursday. Of course, they weren’t playing head-to-head but Tiger managed to keep up with the big-hitting Thomas and both posted 3-under rounds of 69.

Following Saturday’s rough go of things, it would be nice for Tiger to bounce back with a similar round keeping up with Thomas. He’s not going to win but ending it on a positive note before another extended break ahead the 2018 season would be a good way to cap his comeback start. Here’s the full tee sheet for Sunday’s final round in the Bahamas (all times ET):

10:40 a.m. — Brooks Koepka, Henrik Stenson

10:51 a.m. — Daniel Berger, Kevin Kisner

11:02 a.m. — Dustin Johnson, Alex Noren

11:13 a.m. — Justin Thomas, Tiger Woods

11:24 a.m. — ​Kevin Chappell, Tommy Fleetwood

11:35 a.m. — Patrick Reed, Rickie Fowler​

11:46 a.m. — Hideki Matsuyama, Matt Kuchar

11:57 a.m. — Francesco Molinari, Jordan Spieth

12:08 p.m. — Justin Rose, Charley Hoffman