Sports’ long hiatus caused by the spreading of COVID-19 has resulted in a lot of them being televised at the same time. The KPMG Women’s PGA Championship is among several major sporting events on American television this weekend, so it has decided to get creative with the tee-times to ensure viewers will be able to see the leaders play during their early network slot.
In rounds one and two, the Women’s PGA will air on Golf Channel from 1pm to 5pm, local time. For the third round, it’ll be on Golf Channel from 11am to noon and then switch over to NBC from noon to 3pm. For the final round it’s similar, with Golf Channel airing the Major from 10am to noon and then NBC taking over from noon to 2pm. If you’re looking at those weekend times and thinking it seems a bit early, you’re right. Especially when you consider the last final-round tee-time at Aronimink Golf Club is supposed to be 9:32am.
“The [autumn] schedule, as we all know on television, is full of many sports that have either normally finished or just started, so our weekend time slot has been moved to a 3 and a 2pm finish time on Saturday and Sunday,” explained Kerry Haigh, the chief championships officer of the PGA of America. “In some ways we could be making history this week because we will have the leaders not teeing off at the end of the wave on Sunday. And if we don’t finish on Friday, they will not be teeing off last on Saturday, either. We feel it’s important that everyone watching the telecast will see the leaders, see the leaders play all 18 holes.”
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This is where the creativity comes in. To allow viewers to see the leaders play during that unconventional timeslot, players will go off in threesomes from both tees over the weekend. In the final round, the leaders will go off the first tee at 8:43am (note, tee-times are estimates at this time – and Australia is currently 15 hours ahead of the east coast of the US). The players with the next three lowest scores will go off at 8:32am, also off the first tee. It will follow that same pattern through to the first tee-time of the day, the 7:15am tee-time.
Meanwhile, the group teeing off after the leaders will be the players with the highest scores. The players with higher scores will fill the tee-times through 9:27am.
Probably the easiest way to understand it is by splitting the players into groups of A, B, and C, with A being those players with the lowest scores. Tee times off the first hole from 7:15am to 8:43am will be the A players. Tee-times off the first hole from 8:54 a.m. to 9:27 a.m. will be the C players, and all tee-times off the 10th from 7:20am to 9:32am will be B players.
The timesheet is unorthodox, but it’s set up so that while you are going to miss seeing some players on television during the final round, theoretically you’ll get to see all of the leaders’ rounds.
