Zurich Classic 2017 live stream: How to watch online, TV coverage and more

Free Monday golf in New Orleans!

It’s been a relatively easy weather year on the PGA Tour this season. We’ve seen schedules completely wrecked by wind, rain, snow, floods, and lightning in recent years. But so far in 2017, we’ve avoided the dreaded Monday finish. The annual stop in New Orleans, the Zurich Classic, however, will put an end to that.

For the second straight year, the Zurich will go to Monday to decide its champion. This year’s circumstances are much more favorable than the mess of 2016. We had just one real bad weather day this year -- Sunday included a 6.5-hour rain delay in the middle of the round. In 2016, it rained all week and the players mostly sat around in a clubhouse looking forlornly out the windows. We didn’t even know if it would be an official PGA Tour event, with the possibility of the event getting cut down to just 36 holes. There was also discussion of having to push it all the way to Tuesday. In the end, we were able to get in 54 holes before dark on Monday and crown Brian Stuard the champion.

This year, we may need only 10 minutes on Monday morning to decide a winner. That’s because, despite the lengthy weather delay on Sunday, the PGA Tour was proactive and moved tee times up as early as possible for the final round. It’s a routine approach they have to dealing with bad weather and they’ve mastered how to work around these disruptions. On this Sunday, it meant the final group of Jonas Blixt/Cameron Smith and Kevin Kisner/Scott Brown were able to play at least six holes before the horn sounded as the storms rolled in to NOLA. Then, with the players back in place around 4:30 p.m. local, it looked like we could actually get this thing done on time.

But some last second heroics from Kisner forced this to Monday. On the 18th hole, Kisner and Brown likely needed to chip in for eagle and get to 27-under to force a playoff. Smith was inside three feet and almost certainly going to pour his short putt in for birdie (and Smith and Blixt were already a stroke ahead). So Kisner stepped up and delivered on of the more dramatic finishing hole-outs we’ve seen in recent years.

While the playoff is sudden death, that was absolutely the last hole they could have played on Sunday night. The TV cameras made it look might lighter than it actually was, with most of the light on the hole coming from the glow of the video scoreboards. And by the time the two teams got done in the scoring trailer, it would be totally dark.

So we’ll run it back on Monday on the 18th tee at 9 a.m. ET. Golf Channel steps in to provide their usual coverage when events like this don’t end on time. CBS has to get back to their regularly scheduled programming, but Golf Channel, well, this is what they do (it’s there in the name of the network). Golf Channel adjusted their schedule all day on Sunday, choosing to come on the air at 9 a.m. ET to show live coverage of the earlier-than-expected start of the final round. It was the right call, as they got to show 90 minutes of live golf and would have been stuck with nothing but tape delay for their previously scheduled block of 1 to 2:30 p.m.

Then at the end of the day, as things blew well past their scheduled 6 p.m. finish on CBS, Golf Channel stepped in again as the CBS coverage moved over to the cable network for the final hour or so of the final round. Golf Channel actually had to go to an NFL RedZone style split screen for most of the conlusion in NOLA, as they juggled an interminable playoff on the LPGA, which was supposed to end around 7 p.m. ET. So we toggled back and forth between the Zurich and the LPGA on Golf Channel into the evening on Sunday.

We like to scream and yell about all the gaps in coverage, but this was a good effort from the morning through the evening to show as much live golf as they could. Now they’ll come back again on Monday morning for the playoff. Here are the nuts and bolts for Monday’s playoff:

Monday’s playoff information

Who: Kevin Kisner & Scott Brown vs. Cameron Smith & Jonas Blixt

What: Sudden death starting on No. 18, using best-ball fourball format

When: 9 a.m. ET

Where to watch: Golf Channel

How to stream: Golf Channel Live Extra or PGA Tour Live