Farmers Insurance Open 2018 viewing guide: How to watch Tiger Woods live
Woods is back and so are Jim Nantz and CBS. Here’s how to ignore your work and any other weekend responsibilities to watch the PGA Tour’s annual stop at Torrey Pines.
UPDATE: We are in the money! Tiger Woods has made the cut for the first time in almost 900 days and we will get two more rounds to watch the biggest draw in the history of the PGA Tour. It’s a nice windfall for the PGA Tour, Golf Channel, CBS and all the fans who needed to see more Cat. This is the first time CBS will get a crack at covering Tiger since August of 2015 at the Wyndham Championship. So it’s been awhile and Jim Nantz and company will be fully hyped for it, one can imagine.
Tiger tees off on Saturday at 1:10 p.m. ET so Golf Channel’s pregame show from 1 to 2 p.m. should feature live look-ins of most, if not all, of his shots before they take over with early round coverage. Then it’s CBS with Tiger’s back nine late in the day. Your broadcast schedule for the weekend is below.
We’re a couple months away from golf really becoming a part, however small, of the broader sports consciousness. Most of the country is still frozen. The NFL season is not yet over. The Masters and springtime are somewhere off in the distance.
For the casual fan, golf is just kind of going through the motions in the background. There are events each week but you may or may not know where they are, what they’re called, and who is winning them. The more intense fan is obviously following week-to-week, but for everyone else, well, it’s still January.
This week, however, golf will become top of mind in the sports world as Tiger Woods returns to the PGA Tour following another full year off recuperating from back surgery. Woods’ last official start on the PGA Tour came at the Farmers Insurance Open, the same event where he’ll tee it up on Thursday at Torrey Pines.
This time around, he comes to SoCal with a fused back, a more serious and different surgery from the prior microdiscectomies that led to truncated and failed comebacks. Woods does have one tournament under his belt, the Hero World Challenge, which is not an official PGA Tour event and is a little 18-man silly season game that benefits his foundation. Now comes the real thing against a full field and on a course that’s been toughened up significantly over the years (although not exactly with the most tact).
This comeback has looked different. We’ve been sucked in before. But at the very least, we have the objective fact that Woods comes with a different surgery and a newly fused back. We know at least that much is different. He’s also hitting the ball with a speed that wasn’t there in prior returns, a speed that puts him among the very top and biggest hitters on the PGA Tour. Who knows if it is sustainable. That will be a question that lingers throughout the summer, not just this week. We need to see the speed we saw at Hero over several months to really embrace this as a legit Woods return to competitive golf.
With the NFL taking a weekend off before the Super Bowl, Woods’ return has a prime opportunity to become the biggest sports story of the weekend. That’s usually unthinkable for the PGA Tour in January. There will be college hoops and NBA, and the Australian Open is a more important event, but that will be played overnight, on the other side of the world, and not really up against the west coast golf. It’s a potential windfall for Golf Channel and CBS, the networks that will do their usual customary split of the coverage from La Jolla.
This is the first event of the year for CBS now that their Sunday football duties are over. Jim Nantz will exchange Tony Romo for Nick Faldo as they take the reins for the West Coast swing. Golf Channel has had the coverage exclusively for the first three weeks of the season, as they do all fall for the “wraparound” schedule. But the split we get this week is how this usually works, with NBC switching in for CBS during different events and stretches, like during March Madness and the FedExCup.
CBS has been a whipping boy on Twitter in recent years. Their production is a constant topic of angry tweeters. The frequent commercial breaks, minimal shots shown, superfluous sold segments like Brand X sponsoring a bit on Faldo working out in a gym, and substandard ProTracer use are the most common gripes. It got especially bad last year at this very event.
But CBS has committed this year to putting tracer technology on all 18 tee boxes at every PGA Tour event they cover. That’s an enormous step and one that, I think, will fully bring us into the modern era. The network has allegedly heard the complaints so we’ll see what else is adjusted for the season. Torrey can become a bit of a slog, but this is obviously an opportunity to come out swinging to start the year.
Here’s your full coverage schedule for the week:
Thursday’s first round coverage
Television:
3 to 7 p.m. ET — Golf Channel
Online streams:
11:45 a.m. ET -- PGA Tour Live starts with coverage from range and opening holes
- 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET — Free PGA Tour live stream on Twitter
Featured Groups (PGA Tour Live subscription required)
- 12:30 p.m. ET -- Rickie Fowler / Patrick Cantlay / Xander Schauffele
- 12:40 p.m. ET -- Justin Rose / Hideki Matsuyama / Phil Mickelson
- Bonus coverage of Tiger Woods’ round starting at 1:40 p.m. ET
3 to 7 p.m. ET -- PGA Tour Live featured holes coverage (No subscription required)
3 to 7 p.m. ET — Golf Channel simulcast stream
Radio:
1 to 7 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)
Friday’s second round coverage
Television:
3 to 7 p.m. ET — Golf Channel
Online streams:
11:45 a.m. ET -- PGA Tour Live starts with coverage from range and opening holes
- 11:45 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. ET — Free PGA Tour live stream on Twitter
Featured Groups (PGA Tour Live subscription required)
- 12:20 p.m. ET -- Jon Rahm / Jason Day / Brandt Snedeker
- 12:30 p.m. ET -- Tiger Woods / Patrick Reed / Charley Hoffman
3 to 7 p.m. ET -- PGA Tour Live featured holes coverage (No subscription required)
3 to 7 p.m. ET — Golf Channel simulcast stream
Radio:
1 to 7 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)
Saturday’s third round coverage
Television:
2 to 3:30 p.m. ET — Golf Channel
4 to 7 p.m. ET — CBS
Online streams:
11:30 to 7 p.m. ET -- PGA Tour Live featured holes coverage (No subscription required)
2 to 3:30 p.m. ET — Golf Channel LiveExtra simulcast stream
4 to 7 p.m. ET — PGATour.com/CBS simulcast stream
Radio:
2 to 7 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)
Sunday’s final round coverage
Television:
1 to 2:45 p.m. ET — Golf Channel
3 to 6:30 p.m. ET — CBS
Online streams:
11:30 to 6:30 p.m. ET -- PGA Tour Live featured holes coverage
1 to 2:45 p.m. ET — Golf Channel LiveExtra simulcast stream
3 to 6:30 p.m. ET — PGATour.com/CBS simulcast stream
Radio:
1 to 7 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)