WGC Bridgestone Invitational 2017 live stream: Tee times, TV schedule, and how to watch Thursday online

Firestone is a divisive layout but the annual stop in Akron inarguably draws one of the strongest fields of the year and serves as a perfect lead-in to the final major.

While we may all be ready for the (hopefully) Rory-Spieth battle coming next week at the season's final men's major, this week's WGC Bridgestone Invitational remains one of the premier events on the PGA Tour schedule. The entire top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings committed to the annual stop in Firestone, and then we lost Brandt Snedeker at the start of the week due to injury. But 49 of the top 50 at one event, that is not a major, is incredibly rare and speaks to all the big money and power the PGA Tour (and other Tours) puts behind these WGC events, which are still relatively new in professional golf.

Firestone Country Club in Akron has long been a part of the PGA Tour schedule. It predates the modern creation of the WGCs, whether it was as the World Series of Golf, the NEC Invitational, or the American Golf Classic. It has also hosted multiple PGA Championships. The course is now 88 years old, which would make it a classic. But a Robert Trent Jones redesign in the 1960s and the current setup does not exactly endear it to the close followers of the PGA Tour.

The players, by and large, seem to love it and enjoy coming here every year. But the rep among the intense golf twitter crowd is that it's a listless layout with a bunch of long par-4s. Distance is the primary key to succeeding here and trees coming right up along the fairway have taken strategy out of it. Hit it long, and hit it straight and you'll succeed on a course that gets a bad rap for being boring and characterless.

Whatever your opinions of the course may be, the field is absolutely loaded and everyone will be taking home a fat paycheck, even the guy in last place. And the PGA Tour often groups the players according to world ranking or star power, so we're not messing around here. Spieth and McIlroy are together, along with Jason Day, for the first two rounds. It's a strong event that serves as a nice appetizer to next week's PGA and with a major on the schedule next, there's a full international flavor with everyone traveling to the states for the lucrative two-week stretch.

Here are your coverage options for the first round — note, tee times were moved up significantly (more on that below) for the first round due to weather so the TV coverage will mostly likely be on tape delay in the late afternoon.

Thursday's first round coverage (All times ET)

Television:

1:30 to 6:30 p.m. — Golf Channel (tape delay)

Online streams:

7:30 a.m. -- PGA Tour Live starts with coverage from range and opening holes

• 7:30 a.m. to ~8:30 a.m. — Free PGA Tour live stream on Twitter

Featured Groups (PGA Tour Live subscription required):

• 8:10 a.m. -- Jordan Spieth / Rory McIlroy / Jason Day
• 8:20 a.m. -- Dustin Johnson / Brooks Koepka / Hideki Matsuyama

1:30 to 6:30 p.m. — Golf Channel simulcast stream

TEE TIMES

With the forecast looking nasty in Ohio on Thursday and Friday, the PGA Tour wasted no time adjusting the tee sheet. This is a small 76-man limited field so there's a lot of flexibility here in getting 72 holes done by Sunday night. But they still didn't want to risk it with such an ugly forecast and made the customary move to push everything up a bit for the first two rounds. So, we'll have the entire field off split tees and in groups of three over two-hour block starting at 7:30 a.m. ET on Thursday. We'd typically get a two-hour block running from about 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for these first two rounds.

Here's the tee sheet for Thursday's opening round:

Off No. 1:

• 7:30 a.m.: Kyle Stanley, Bernd Wiesberger
• 7:40 a.m.: Kevin Kisner, Francesco Molinari, Shaun Norris
• 7:50 a.m.: Brian Harman, Emiliano Grillo, Scott Hend
• 8:00 a.m.: Hudson Swafford, Pat Perez, Sam Brazel
• 8:10 a.m.: Bryson DeChambeau, Branden Grace, Renato Paratore
• 8:20 a.m.: Gary Woodland, Andres Romero, Chris Wood
• 8:30 a.m.: Xander Schauffele, Louis Oosthuizen, Hideto Tanihara
• 8:40 a.m.: Charley Hoffman, J.B. Holmes, Thorbjorn Olesen
• 8:50 a.m.: Si Woo Kim, Ryan Moore, Paul Casey
• 9:00 a.m.: Henrik Stenson, Justin Rose, Harold Varner III
• 9:10 a.m.: Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, Adam Scott
• 9:20 a.m.: Sergio Garcia, Rickie Fowler, Matt Kuchar
• 9:30 a.m.: Daniel Berger, Rafa Cabrera Bello, Tommy Fleetwood

Off No. 10:

• 7:30 a.m.: Brendan Steele, Russell Knox, Lee Westwood
• 7:40 a.m.: Wesley Bryan, Ross Fisher, Jeunghun Wang
• 7:50 a.m.: Jimmy Walker, Danny Willett, Bubba Watson
• 8:00 a.m.: Jhonattan Vegas, Billy Horschel, Tyrrell Hatton
• 8:10 a.m.: Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Jason Day
• 8:20 a.m.: Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Hideki Matsuyama
• 8:30 a.m.: Phil Mickelson, Thomas Pieters, Alex Noren
• 8:40 a.m.: Russell Henley, Paul Lawrie
• 8:50 a.m.: Rod Pampling, Patrick Reed, Fabrizio Zanotti
• 9:00 a.m.: Adam Hadwin, Zach Johnson, Matthew Fitzpatrick
• 9:10 a.m.: Charl Schwartzel, Bill Haas, Satoshi Kodaira
• 9:20 a.m.: Kevin Chappell, Marc Leishman, Thongchai Jaidee
• 9:30 a.m.: Jason Dufner, Mackenzie Hughes, Andy Sullivan