Saturday is usually a slower day on the PGA Tour. You’re not watching to avoid your work at the office like the first two rounds. You’ve got things to do, places to go, people to see and you want to enjoy the world. There’s also no finality to the event. We’re not going to decide things on Saturdays so it’s okay to get outside and go do something else.
Valspar Championship 2018: Tiger Woods’ tee time, plus full pairings for Saturday
Tiger is playing in the second-to-last group on a damn weekend of a PGA Tour event.
Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
But this Saturday may be different. This Saturday might be worth anchoring to your couch in the afternoon because Tiger Woods is in real, actual contention on the PGA Tour. And he’s shown us nothing to believe that will change on the weekend at the Valspar Championship.
Tiger tees off in the penultimate pairing on Saturday’s tee sheet. He’ll go with Brandt Snedeker at 1:45 p.m. ET off the first tee. The Tour is sending them in twosomes all off No. 1 this weekend, a departure from recent events through the first two months of the season. It will also help to get an extra hour of daylight for Sunday’s final round. The twosomes all off one tee definitely make the pace move a bit more -- it’s inexcusable if these rounds get much longer than four hours long.
Woods and Snedeker have plenty of experience playing together so it should be a comfortable pairing. They were together in the first two rounds of the Honda Classic just two weeks ago. So Sneds has seen what Tiger can do right now up close and personal, and he’s also accustomed to, or as accustomed as one can be, to playing in a Tiger group. There’s really no comparable environment on Tour, with the galleries swelling and movement constant around you. It’s gotten especially bad in the few events he’s played this year, with comments from Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas amplifying just how stupid and loud the people in the gallery are getting. Snedeker should be fine handling it though.
The week started with a ton of promise beyond just Tiger making his first start in some 22 years at this Tampa course. We had Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth, two of the young guns who have taken over the game with Tiger on the shelf. But their struggles continued at Innisbrook and they never really came close to making the cut. So this Saturday will be all about Tiger. Expect to see his every shot on Golf Channel and NBC’s split coverage of the afternoon.
Here’s the full tee sheet for Saturday’s third round at the Valspar Championship:
- 7:35: Stephan Jaeger, Abraham Ancer
- 7:45: Charles Howell III, Ernie Els
- 7:55: Martin Flores, Patrick Rodgers
- 8:05: Sam Saunders, J.B. Holmes
- 8:15: Graeme McDowell, Sung Kang
- 8:25: Scott Stallings, Jamie Lovemark
- 8:35: Robert Garrigus, Alex Cejka
- 8:45: Ryan Armour, Luke Donald
- 8:55: A Dylan Meyer, Ben Martin
- 9:05: Chad Campbell, Sam Ryder
- 9:15: Aaron Baddeley, J.J. Henry
- 9:25: Adam Scott, Matt Kuchar
- 9:35: David Lingmerth, Rod Pampling
- 9:45: Harold Varner III, Fabián Gómez
- 9:55: Chris Couch, Scott Brown
- 10:05: T.J. Vogel, Aaron Wise
- 10:15: Ollie Schniederjans, Dominic Bozzelli
- 10:25: Si Woo Kim, Matt Every
- 10:35: Jim Furyk, Charl Schwartzel
- 10:45 Cameron Smith, Austin Cook
- 10:55: Sergio Garcia, Russell Knox
- 11:05: Whee Kim, Stewart Cink
- 11:15: Lucas Glover, Brice Garnett
- 11:25: Adam Schenk, Ryan Blaum
- 11:35: Steve Stricker, Nick Watney
- 11:45: William McGirt, Chris Kirk
- 11:55: Rory Sabbatini, Luke List
- 12:05: Shane Lowry, Zach Johnson
- 12:15: Branden Grace, Adam Hadwin
- 12:25: Sam Burns, Bill Haas
- 12:35: Patrick Reed, Blayne Barber
- 12:45: Trey Mullinax, Louis Oosthuizen
- 12:55: Jimmy Walker, Tyrone Van Aswegen
- 1:05: Keegan Bradley, Bob Estes
- 1:15: Justin Rose, Webb Simpson
- 1:25: Sean O’Hair, Jason Kokrak
- 1:35: Ryan Palmer, Kelly Kraft
- 1:45: Brandt Snedeker, Tiger Woods
- 1:55: Corey Conners, Paul Casey
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