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Sunday's tee sheet is going to look a little different at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship
David Cannon
Sports' long hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a lot of them being televised at the same time. The KPMG Women’s PGA Championship is among several major sporting events on television this weekend, so PGA of America officials running the event have decided to get creative with the tee times to ensure viewers will be able to see the leaders play during their early network slot.
On Thursday and Friday, the KPMG Women’s PGA will air on Golf Channel from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. (EDT). On Saturday, it’ll be on Golf Channel from 11 a.m. to noon and then switch over to NBC from noon to 3 p.m. On Sunday it’s similar, with Golf Channel airing the major from 10 a.m. to noon and then NBC taking over from noon to 2 p.m. If you’re looking at those weekend times and thinking it looks a bit early, you’re right. Especially when you consider the last tee time on Sunday is supposed to go off around 9:32 a.m.
“The fall schedule, as we all know on television, is full of many sports that have either normally finished or just started, so our weekend time slot has been moved to a 3 and a 2 p.m. finish time on Saturday and Sunday,” Kerry Haigh, the Chief Championships Officer of the PGA of America, explained. “In some ways we could be making history this week because we will have the leaders not teeing off at the end of the wave on Sunday. And if we don't finish on Friday, they will not be teeing off last on Saturday, either. We feel it's important that everyone watching the telecast will see the leaders, [and] see the leaders play all 18 holes.”
This is where the creativity comes in. To allow viewers to see the leaders play during that unconventional timeslot, players will go off in threesomes from both tees over the weekend. On Sunday, the leaders will go off the first tee at 8:43 a.m. (note, tee times are estimates at this time). The players with the next three lowest scores will go off at 8:32 a.m., also off the first tee. It will follow that same pattern through to the first tee time of the day, the 7:15 a.m. tee time.
Meanwhile, the group teeing off after the leaders will be the players with the highest scores. The players with higher scores will fill the tee times through 9:27 a.m.
Probably the easiest way to understand it is by splitting the players into groups of A, B, and C, with A being those players with the lowest scores. Tee times off No. 1 from 7:15 a.m. to 8:43 a.m. will be the A players. Tee times off No. 1 from 8:54 a.m. to 9:27 a.m. will be the C players, and all tee times off of No. 10 from 7:20am - 9:32am will be B players.
The tee sheet is unorthodox, but it's set up so that while you are going to miss seeing some players on television on Sunday, theoretically you’ll get to see all of the leaders’ rounds.