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

Business just picked up on the PGA Tour. That’s because the biggest rainmaker in its history just made his first cut in almost 900 days.

Tiger Woods is back playing the weekend of a PGA Tour event, making birdie on his very last hole Friday afternoon to just sneak above the cut line on the number. There was an immediate sense of relief, a joy, and a feeling of triumph. For Tiger, who was grinning, for the Tour, who now gets two more days of the Tiger windfall, and for us hacks in the media, who get another two days to fire off Tiger takes. We all get to indulge in the Tiger show for 36 more holes and whatever happens from here on out, we’re better off for it. This week is a success and Tiger could use the two more rounds of reps, especially on a tougher course this early in the season.

It also means Jim Nantz will get to exalt in calling a Tiger Woods round once again. It has been awhile for Jim, with CBS just getting the weekend rounds on the PGA Tour. Tiger missed the cut here by miles last year and has been on the sidelines really since August of 2015. It’s probably been since that PGA Championship, where Tiger also missed the cut, that Nantz called a Tiger round. There have been booth visits from the Big Cat during events he hosts, like the former Quicken Loans National in DC. But nothing for Nantz to get worked up about on the course.

So Jim will be in a full lather this weekend, especially on Saturday with Tiger’s first appearance on a CBS broadcast in years. It will be glorious, if you have a little perspective about the whole thing. This is a big stretch for CBS. The West Coast swing provides some great venues and an uninterrupted stretch of strong PGA Tour events with a lot of tradition before they take their March Madness break.

CBS committed to putting tracer technology on every single tee box at every event, a dramatic step to improving coverage. But we still need to see less commercials, more versatility in showing more players all over the course, and just generally more golf shots. I think it can be a bit of unwarranted cliche groupthink to start ripping into CBS’ coverage, but there was no denying it struggled at this event last year.

They will get the conclusion of Tiger’s round on Satuday. Woods is set to tee off at 1:10 p.m. ET on the back nine. They’re going off two tees in groups of three on Saturday, and Woods, because he was so close to the cut line, gets a draw with the back side start. Golf Channel is not schedule to come on the air with their early-round coverage until 2 p.m. ET. They have a pregame show running from 1 to 2 p.m., so that should have live look-ins and highlights of Tiger’s first few holes. We should be covered on getting his every shot from the very first tee, but some of these PGA Tour coverage rules can get draconian at times.

Here’s your full media schedule for Saturday’s third round at the Farmers Insurance Open:

2 to 3:30 p.m. ET — Golf Channel

4 to 7 p.m. ET — CBS

11:30 to 7 p.m. ET -- PGA Tour Live featured holes coverage (No subscription required)

1 to 3:30 p.m. ET — Golf Channel LiveExtra simulcast stream

4 to 7 p.m. ET — PGATour.com/CBS simulcast stream

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