Sunday at Riv is the best the PGA Tour has to offer

Riviera is always worth watching, and we’ve got another stout Sunday leaderboard in L.A. this year.

The NBA All-Star Game is the biggest show in Los Angeles on Sunday. But before that, the golf should be pretty good, too. The Genesis Open begins bright and early at Riviera, the best course on the PGA Tour schedule. It should serve as a nice appetizer, or perhaps even the entree, to the exhibition game at Staples Center later that night.

Golf Channel and CBS will have their usual coverage split for the final round. GC goes live at 1 p.m. ET for a 105-minute coverage window early in the round. Then we’ll have our 15-minute coverage gap before CBS takes the reins to bring us home. The broadcast is scheduled to run until 6:30 pm. ET, well before the All-Star Game goes on the air at 8 p.m.

Sunday will be the latest chapter in the ongoing drama of the coverage gap. The scheduled 15 minutes is an admirable attempt to cut in half the pesky 30-minute blackout period. And if college basketball — Ohio State at Michigan starts at 1 p.m. — runs long, we may get that new wrinkle of kicking the start of the CBS coverage and production back to Golf Channel at the top of the hour.

After years of griping and angry tweets, that experiment began on Sunday at the Phoenix Open (one day after college hoops went a preposterous 45 minutes long on CBS). It then continued at Pebble Beach on both Saturday and Sunday during CBS’ coverage. But then on Saturday at Riv, it didn’t move back to Golf Channel when college hoops went long on CBS. So who knows if this is an official policy now or just a thing that sometimes happens if people are angry or desperate. The coverage schedule during the gap is basically the incarnation of the shruggie emoji right now, so we’ll see what happens on Sunday!

Riviera is really its own star. If you’re a golf nerd, it does not matter who is on the leaderboard. The classic Los Angeles course is a star in and of itself, loaded with great holes. This Sunday, we have Bubba Watson, twice a winner of this event, on top of the leaderboard. Bubba spent the last season wandering the wilderness, playing a neon-colored golf ball and precipitously tumbling down the official world golf rankings. Now he’s back to his traditional ball that made him so successful over his career. It’s probably not a coincidence that he’s on top of the board after looking like trash for a year.

Chasing Bubba are Patrick Cantlay, Kevin Na, Cam Smith, Justin Thomas, and world No. 1 and defending champ Dustin Johnson, among others. DJ made the cut by a stroke, but after a Saturday 64, he’s now within legitimate striking distance on a course, like Bubba, that he’s feasted on during his career. We’re set up for a strong Sunday — Riv is always worth watching. Here’s your media schedule for the final round in L.A.:

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 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET -- PGA Tour Live featured groups/holes coverage

• 11:25 a.m. ET — Featured groups - Rory McIlroy / Matt Kuchar / Ben Silverman
• 1 p.m. ET — Featured holes — Riviera’s 10th and 16th holes

1 to 2:45 p.m. ET — Golf Channel LiveExtra simulcast stream

3 to 6 p.m. ET — PGATour.com/CBS simulcast stream

Radio:

1 to 6:30 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Radio on SiriusXM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)