Golf

The Players Championship 2018: TV channel and schedule for Round 2

The good news is that Tiger Woods is playing his first Players Championship in three years. The bad news is his second round on Friday will not be on TV.

by Brendan Porath

May 11, 2018, 12:15 PM UTC

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Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Golf Channel got its big fish on Thursday afternoon and they will have to settle for leftovers on Friday. Tiger Woods will be out early on Friday morning at The Players Championship, going off just before 8:30 a.m. ET. That means he should be done with about 16 of his 18 holes in the second round by the time Golf Channel comes on the air at 1 p.m. ET.

The TV network got the Tiger bump on Thursday, however, as the two-time Players winner played his entire round during the coverage window with Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler. It was a fairly uneventful opening round for Woods, who slogged his way to an even-par 72 over a five-plus hour march. The late half of the draw on Friday will feature the other supergroup in this 2018 edition at TPC Sawgrass, the one with the last three FedExCup champions.

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Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Justin Thomas will slot into that 1:52 p.m. tee time that Tiger and Phil occupied on Thursday. So expect the GC cameras to follow their every shot as you wind down the clock on the week and get to happy hour. McIlroy is the only player of the six from the two supergroups that is under par. Mickelson had the most disastrous opening round, playing the final five holes in 7-over to fully eject. He won’t be seeing the weekend. Tiger, who struggled to hang on in his opening round, actually had the second-best score of the group behind Rory at even-par. He may get some benign morning conditions on Friday with a chance to post a round in the 60s and move up the board before many of the current leaders tee off in the afternoon wave.

If you want to watch Tiger’s group on Friday, you’ll have to be a PGA Tour Live subscriber to see the majority of his early-morning game. A potential workaround, however, is signing up for an ESPN+ free trial. That new OTT service announced a deal with the PGA Tour to carry and simulcast these featured groups streams as part of their inventory as they get off the ground. So that’s an option if you’re trying to watch Tiger, definitely ignore your work on a Friday, and don’t want to pay for it.

Here are your media options for the second round at The Players Championship: