A 2017 Travelers Championship primer: How to watch, course background, and its strongest field ever

There’s usually time to catch your breath after a major championship. Get away, maybe take a break from golf for a few days and refocus. But there’s no time to exhale after this year’s U.S. Open, and that’s because the Travelers Championship is absolutely loaded. The annual stop in Hartford has somehow (we’ll explore that later) drawn Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, and Jason Day.

Those three headliners obviously give this event some juice and are a prime reason to watch just days after the finish of the second major of the season. But this is also a classic event with a longstanding spot on the schedule on a unique course that can yield record rounds in front of some of the Tour’s rowdiest crowds. We’re still reveling in and digesting Sunday at Erin Hills, but with so many big names in Hartford, it’s worth going through the nuts and bolts of what will be a heavyweight event coming this week.

TPC River Highlands is the perfect post-U.S. Open setup for the PGA Tour. We just got done dissecting and fretting over Erin Hills for a full week, as is custom at the U.S. Open. As a new venue, it was always going to get intense scrutiny. The scores were lower than normal for a national championship and that made some upset, but it was a perfect modern test that rewarded all styles of play, so long as those styles were played well.

From an aesthetic standpoint, no one will confuse TPC River Highlands with Erin Hills. There are trees here and no waist-high fescue lining the fairways and it’s 1,000 yards shorter. It’s also a par-70, not a par-72 stretched out to 7,800 yards.

But this is a course, like Erin Hills, that always rewards different styles of play — not just the bomb-and-gougers that are so prevalent on Tour and often given an advantage each week. A creative masher like Bubba Watson (2010, 2015 champ and regular top-five finisher) can succeed here and so can Russell Knox, last year’s champion who is not exactly known for his length.

This is what we want out of a modern test and why Erin Hills was such a refreshing major championship venue. We wanted options. We want an increased emphasis on strategy. We want all styles of play rewarded if they are played well. When Jim Furyk, never known for his distance but one of the great players of his generation, has the ability to make it around the track with the PGA Tour’s first ever 58, we know we’re at a place that’s more than just a bomber’s paradise.

The par 70 will typically play under 6,900 yards. The marquee stretch is the closing stretch, which seems intuitive but is not always the case on the PGA Tour. Here, however, the final four holes are a perfect mix of scoring chances and potential trouble that can shake up a leaderboard in the final moments.

The driveable par-4 15th is one of the coolest holes on the PGA Tour, set up under 300 yards and forcing the players to make a risk-reward choice. The driveable par-4 has been the hot design and course setup trend for several years now. It makes for exciting TV and strategy, as we saw at Erin Hills’ short par-4 15th all last week. TPC River Highlands’ short par-4 has been a staple and highlight hole for years.

The 15th is not a difficult hole, playing as the easiest on the course last year. But it creates options that range from a potential ace on a par-4 to a messy double bogey that will extinguish your chances. Few need a driver if they’re trying to get home.

The 15th is start of a three-hole stretch around the same lake, a horseshoe that will be spotlighted from the air and which fans post up on for the day to see shots into multiple holes. The driveable par-4 is the one that gets all the attention, but following it is a 170-yard par-3 to a narrow green and a stout par-4 that brings water into play on both the drive and approach. The 18th is a 444-yard par-4 up a chute and into an amphitheater full of rowdy fans.

Birdies are fun. Birdies are good. We don’t need to scoff at low scores. This is what we want the week after the U.S. Open — a test that rewards multiple styles and isn’t par-golf drudgery. This finishing stretch has character and allows for leaderboard movement, and at the end of a round, allows for the potential, at least, for someone to make a big charge.

We’ll have much more on this throughout the week, power ranking the field and also examining how it was put together. But the Travelers Championship field, for golf nerds and close PGA Tour watchers, has sneakily become one of the bigger stories of the Tour’s season.

It’s loaded at the top, drawing Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Jason Day together for the first time to Hartford. This is Day’s third appearance in Hartford, while the other two have never played the event. Getting one of those commitments makes sense and would be a player announcement that you definitely notice. Getting all three in the same year is crazy.

The three events after the U.S.-based majors — Harbour Town, the Travelers, and Greensboro — have all done an excellent job embracing their spot on the schedule and carving out a strong identity in what seems like a tough week to get top players. But this is a remarkable accomplishment getting these three to the Travelers the week after the U.S. Open and on a crowded PGA Tour schedule. In addition to those three, there’s also old standby Bubba, and young guns Patrick Reed and Justin Thomas, who just broke a 43-year-old scoring record on Saturday at the U.S. Open.

This is as strong a field as you could imagine for the week after major and we’re ready to watch superstar bombers Rory and Jason attack this gettable course.

In addition to the headliners, this is also one of those events where the PGA Tour regulars have to make some hay. We’re in a stretch where players need to make money and earn FedExCup points with starts dwindling before the end of the regular season. And in a game where the margins are so small between someone at the top of the world rankings and a Web.com Tour player, it’s often more fun to watch the players with loads of game grinding it out with less spotlight.

Here’s your full field at the start of the week — we’ll dive deeper on some of those headliners and dark horses in the coming days:

The Travelers purse for 2017 is $6.8 million, paying out $1.224 million to the winner. That’s a $200,000 bump from last year’s purse.

The Travelers was one of the tournaments most impacted by last year’s manic schedule shaken up to make room for the Olympics. Instead of its usual late-June slot after the U.S. Open, the Hartford stop was moved to August and the week running into the opening ceremonies in Rio. Bubba, Reed, and Matt Kuchar flew straight down there from the Travelers.

Now we’re back to June and a much more normal routine. Here’s your coverage schedule for the week:

TV: Golf Channel, 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. ET

Streaming:

PGA Tour Live Featured Groups, ~7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET

PGA Tour Live Featured Holes, 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET

Golf Channel simulcast stream, 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. ET

TV:

Golf Channel, 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. ET

CBS, 3 to 6 p.m. ET

Streaming:

PGA Tour Live Featured Holes, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET

Golf Channel simulcast stream, 1 to 2:30 p.m. ET

PGA Tour Live/CBS simulcast stream, 3 to 6 p.m. ET