WGC Dell Match Play 2017: Tee times, TV channel, and live stream for Saturday

The round robin pool play portion of the WGC Dell Match play is now over. The week will bring two days of double session golf to get us from the sweet 16 to our new 2017 champion. Saturday will be a 36-hole sprint to decide the final four. The morning session begins bright and early at 8:30 a.m. ET (7:30 local in Austin, TX) with the first of two single elimination rounds.

Many of the top seeds in the competition were bounced during the pool play rounds from Wednesday through Friday. That’s the fickle nature of golf and match play. The most talented or highest-ranked players don’t necessarily show out in a small sample of an 18-hole match, and anyone at this level can pick off anyone else.

Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy lost right out of the gate on Wednesday morning to a couple of hot players, putting them in a hole in their group that they could not get out of by Friday afternoon. We also lost Jason Day, the defending champ, but for a much more serious reason. Day withdrew just six holes into his first match and announced his head understandably wasn’t in it, disclosing his mother was battling lung cancer and set to have surgery on Friday.

The world No. 1, however, is still here and looking fairly unstoppable. The fickleness of this event will be put to the test on Saturday morning when Dustin Johnson, who dominated his group, plays Zach Johnson, who scratched and scrambled through his group to win with a par putt on the 18th hole Friday against Brendan Steele.

DJ has to be the favorite with just 16 of 64 players remaining, and he’ll get his weekend going in the anchor tee time on Saturday morning, 9:47 a.m. ET. It’s a contrast of styles, to say the least. DJ rips it farther than anyone in the world and goes after everything, while ZJ is a short hitter and plays conservative layup golf more often than not.

Along with DJ, Phil Mickelson is also still swinging in Austin. He cruised through his group stage too, wiping out J.B. Holmes on Friday to finish with a perfect 3-0-0 record. Phil’s game has been spotty in the first quarter of the year, hitting his driver all over the yard and scrambling to stay on leaderboards. But it’s worked so far at the Match Play in what will be the first of three straight weeks playing for Lefty. He’s off to his customary pre-Masters stop in Houston next week and then it’s Augusta.

Mickelson gets last week’s winner at Bay Hill, Marc Leishman, on Saturday morning. They go in the second slot at 8:41 a.m. ET. That’s probably the most intriguing matchup of this round, on paper. Here’s the full schedule for the morning session (all times ET):

8:30 AM Kevin Na (12) vs. Bill Haas (11)

8:41 AM Marc Leishman (7) vs. Phil Mickelson (4)

8:52 AM Jon Rahm (6) vs. Charles Howell III (16)

9:03 AM Soren Kjeldsen (16) vs. William McGirt (12)

9:14 AM Hideto Tanihara (14) vs. Paul Casey (3)

9:25 AM Ross Fisher (12) vs. Bubba Watson (4)

9:36 AM Alex Noren (2) vs. Brooks Koepka (5)

9:47 AM Dustin Johnson (1) vs. Zach Johnson (11)

The afternoon schedule for the four matches in the elite eight round will be out at the conclusion of the morning session. They’re targeting a 6 p.m. finish on NBC, so expect those four matches to start around 1 p.m. ET.

Here’s your updated bracket:

UPDATE: Here’s your match schedule for the elite 8:

1:25 PM Phil Mickelson (4) vs. Bill Haas (11)

1:40 PM Jon Rahm (6) vs. Soren Kjeldsen (16)

1:55 PM Hideto Tanihara (14) vs. Ross Fisher (12)

2:10 AM Dustin Johnson (1) vs. Alex Noren (2)

And here’s the full media schedule for the double session on Saturday at Austin Country Club:

10 a.m. to 2 p.m. -- Golf Channel

2 to 6 p.m. -- NBC

10 a.m. to 6 p.m. -- Golf Channel/NBC Sports LiveExtra simulcast stream

10 a.m. to 6 p.m. -- PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)