Tiger’s back! Nuts and bolts for Woods’ 2019 debut at Torrey Pines
Torrey Pines has been a house of horrors for Tiger in recent years, but now he makes his 2019 debut without the fear and doubt that another comeback is about to come undone.
The PGA Tour season is 11 events old at this point, but for most of the sports world, it doesn’t really start until this week. That’s because this week is the annual stop at Torrey Pines for the Farmers Insurance Open, and that’s where Tiger Woods joins the battle. The golf diehards may watch those fall series events and a few more may watch the Hawaii swing at the start of a new year, but Tiger’s return to the tour takes it up a level and gets the world thinking about golf, and even the Masters. It also helps that this event falls during the first weekend without football since Labor Day (the pro bowl doesn’t count as football unless you’re sick and have a problem).
Tiger returns to Torrey this year and there’s finally not a suffocating sense of dread that his spine may crumble to dust on the first swing. He makes a debut coming off a full season of PGA Tour golf for the first time since 2014, which was when his back issues really sent his career sideways. He’s also coming off a win in his last start in an official PGA Tour event. The Ryder Cup does not count as official, nor does the Hero World Challenge or “The Match.” That’s a good thing, because Tiger looked bad in all three of those events following his incredible victory at the Tour Championship.
Now he’s had almost two months off and there are no overwhelming fears about his ability to just play a full competitive round of golf or to get his “glutes activated.” That’s been a problem at this venue. We used to associate the Farmers Insurance Open with Tiger dominance. He showed up as a laughably heavy favorite and often started the year with a win. He’s won on this course eight times, including his last major, that 2008 U.S. Open title on a torn ACL. But that association changed in recent years. There was that failure of the glutes to activate. And missed cuts. And record-setting rounds for all the wrong reasons. And morose slogs that looked no fun and made you feel like his career had to be over. It became a house of horrors and really just the scene for another false start of a comeback.
Tiger may be back to being a real, competitive golfer but this is not a course that suits his strengths anymore. His distance advantage is gone. The young wave of players hit it just as far, and often farther, as they’ve grown up obsessed with speed and with the tracking data to perfectly optimize a swing for power. That power plays at Torrey and while Tiger can still swing with speed, he’s wild off the tee and that just doesn’t play with the rough they condition at this Rees Jones redesign. It’s a long course and penal for the wild drivers. So while Tiger may have owned this event during his career, it is no longer the most suitable venue for a win for him, relative to the rest of the field.
But he’s healthy. He’s coming off a win. And he’s back at Torrey without the sense that this is the start of another short-lived and hopeless comeback. Here are your nuts and bolts for his first round of 2019.
Thursday’s tee times
Tiger will play with the current FedExCup No. 1, Xander Schauffele, and his 2018 Ryder Cup teammate, Tony Finau. Tiger indicated this week that he has never played with either one during a PGA Tour round, so this will be a new but probably not uncomfortable experience. He got to know Finau at the Ryder Cup and probably crossed paths with the X-man, a San Diego native, during last season.
For an event that’s loaded, these aren’t exactly the household names you might expect in a Tiger power-grouping. But it’s good to see the Tour throwing some fresh faces into the spotlight. They’ve earned it. Tiger’s group will go off No. 1 on the South Course at 1:40 ET.
Like many events in this first quarter of the year with limited daylight, the Farmers takes place on multiple courses before the cut is made. That is the case with three of the five events on the West Coast swing. Each player at the Farmers plays one round on the North Course and one round on the South Course before everything moves to the South for the weekend with the field cut in half. This is arguably the best municipal golf complex in the country given the setting and pedigree, but architecture experts will tell you it could be so much better than the Rees Jones redesign that feels like a waste of the seaside terrain.
Tiger starts on the South Course, traditionally the harder of the two, before jumping to the North for Friday’s second round. There will be morning and afternoon waves off the 1st and 10th tees at both courses to ensure this full field gets through 36 holes by the weekend. The primary weather delays at this event are usually caused by early morning fog but things generally stay on schedule in San Diego. The two courses mean that most of the field is in action at the same time, as opposed to the often sun-up to sun-down golf we endure with a full field. Here are some notable tee times for the opening round. The tee sheet has plenty of starpower (all times ET):
- 12:30 p.m. — Charles Howell III, Cameron Champ, Michael Kim
- 12:30 p.m. — Brandt Snedeker, Jason Day, Jon Rahm
- 12:40 p.m. — Justin Rose, Billy Horschel, Jordan Spieth
- 1:30 p.m. — Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, Adam Scott
- 1:40 p.m. — Xander Schauffele, Tiger Woods, Tony Finau
- 1:40 p.m. — Patrick Reed, Kyle Stanley, Mackenzie Hughes
You can view a full tee sheet here.
Thursday’s first-round coverage
Golf Channel will have the coverage all day on Thursday before CBS takes over on the weekend. Golf Channel is now the PGA Tour’s partner for PGA Tour Live, which was carried in several places during its first few years of existence. Now the Tour’s OTT production has settled down with NBC Sports Gold, the sister network of Golf Channel. So that’s where you can find featured groups coverage during Thursday and Friday rounds this year. You will need a subscription but not on this Thursday, because Golf Channel is just going to run a “sneak peek” of the OTT streaming service on its linear TV channel beginning at Noon.
So you will not need a subscription to watch Tiger from the very first tee in his first round. Turn on Golf Channel or pull up the simulcast stream for it below.
Television:
Noon to 3 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Live free preview on Golf Channel with start of Tiger’s round
3 to 7 p.m. ET — Golf Channel’s regular broadcast coverage
Online streams:
Noon to 7 p.m. ET — Golf Channel simulcast stream
11:45 a.m. ET — PGA Tour Live on NBC Sports Gold 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 (NBC Sports Gold)
- 12:30 p.m. ET — Brandt Snedeker / Jason Day / Jon Rahm
- 12:40 p.m. ET — Justin Rose / Jordan Spieth / Billy Horschel
- 1:40 p.m. ET — Bonus coverage of Tiger Woods’ round
Radio:
1 to 7 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)