Farmers Insurance Open 2018: Time, TV schedule for Tiger Woods on Thursday

For the past four years, Tiger sightings in the wild have been rare.

Poor play, injuries, and surgery recoveries dropped Tiger Woods’ career off a cliff following his 2013 Player of the Year season. A swath of those rare sightings occurred at Torrey Pines, the same place where Woods will make a comeback following an abrupt failure of one last year. The 2017 Farmers Insurance Open was the only official start Tiger made on the PGA Tour. He never made it back out on the stateside Tour again, got his back fused in April, and called it a season. Now he’s back at Torrey again, hoping to avoid the ignominy and injury of last year’s false start at this course.

Given the last four years, there are reasons to be skeptical, guarded, and less than enthusiastic about yet another comeback attempt. You’d be forgiven if you insisted this was just another trap and one that won’t end well.

But you’re still going to watch to find out. Given the rarity of those sightings, and all that Tiger still means to the game, it’s a must-watch. It’s must-watch whether you think he’s back and going to win all four majors this year. It’s a must-watch if you think he’s completely washed and, even if he got a different kind of surgery, you don’t believe he’s pain-free because you’ve heard it all before. And it’s a must-watch if you’re somewhere in between or have no real opinion or expectation. It’s Tiger freaking Woods and we don’t know how many more of these opportunities we’ll have. It may be just a scant few, or it may be several years of success all re-starting this very week at Torrey.

Woods will get it going at 1:40 p.m. ET (or 10:40 a.m. local) on the South Course at Torrey Pines. The first two rounds of the Farmers Insurance Open are spread out on both the South and North courses before the field is cut in half and everything moves to the South for the weekend. With two courses in play, the entire field is put out there in about a two-hour window. We don’t need a morning and afternoon wave with sunup-to-sundown golf.

So Tiger is going to play during the TV window on each of the first two days. Golf Channel will have the coverage on Thursday, coming on the air with their pregame show at 2:30 p.m. ET before transitioning to the full broadcast at 3 p.m. Golf Channel is likely to show every Tiger shot falling during that pregame window, and run highlights from the first few holes.

But of course there is a streaming option as well to watch Tiger from the very first tee of his first PGA Tour round in a year. PGA Tour Live, the Tour’s over-the-top streaming service that now has a couple full seasons under its belt, kicked back up last week in Palm Springs, the first event of the year in the continental U.S. I’m old enough to remember a time when the Tour provided featured groups streams for free. But the subscription is not too pricey and the service, which uses the technology of MLBAM, is excellent.

The featured groups for PGA Tour Live are on the North Course on Thursday. But they’ll send a crew over to the South for “bonus coverage” to show Tiger’s round right from start at 1:40 p.m. ET. Here’s your media schedule for Thursday’s opening round:

3 to 7 p.m. ET — Golf Channel

11:45 a.m. ET — PGA Tour Live starts with coverage from range and opening holes

Featured Groups (PGA Tour Live subscription required)

3 to 7 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Live featured holes coverage (No subscription required)

3 to 7 p.m. ET — Golf Channel simulcast stream

1 to 7 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)