PGA Championship 2018: Schedule, tee times, and other info you need for Friday

The PGA may not be the most prestigious major. But it’s still a major, dammit, and it’s the last one before a cold, barren eight month wait. Here are your nuts and bolts for the start from St. Louis.

Tiger takes the tee early on Thursday at the PGA.
 Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images
The second round of the final major tees off bright and early from St. Louis on Friday. The 100th PGA Championship features the deepest major field of the year and a full helping of questions about the course and its conditioning. Those questions always tend to consume the practice days at a major, but there appear to be some real problems given the heat and humidity and water that have stressed this Bellerive track out all summer.
The first round featured higher-than-expected scores. I think the prevailing wisdom was there would be boatloads of scores in the mid-60s and that we were well on our way to a winning score at 20-under or even higher. That’s still in play, but the scores were not as low as expected in the first round.
The leaderboard is what we expected. The big hitters and young talents playing well mostly posted rounds in the red and are in position with 54 more to play. Rickie Fowler set the early pace with a 5-under 65, and then Gary Woodland came in late to move into solo first with a 6-under 64.
Tiger Woods is back after a three-year absence from the PGA and he opened with an even-par round of 70. All in, the number felt like an successful escape following a 3-over in two-hole start. Tiger looked on the verge of an ejection from the championship, but then played the rest of the course in 3-under to fight back into even-par position. That’s the same spot as Rory McIlroy, a favorite all week. So Tiger is still in fine position and he’ll play Friday afternoon during the TV window on TNT.
Ignore your work and dive into the second round of what will be our last major for an interminable, cold eight months. Here are some of the nuts and bolts for the second round.

Friday’s second-round coverage

The PGA television deal is antiquated. There is no other way to put it. The Masters TV arrangement is antiquated by choice — they want limited TV coverage and people mad and fiending for it. The U.S. Open and British Open have modern TV deals, in that there’s basically a broadcast up and running for the entire tournament and you’re not going to miss anything important. Those are relatively new contracts with FOX and Golf Channel, which goes a little crazy at The Open and shows almost 50 damn hours through the night for four days.
The PGA deal? Well, we get six hours each of the first two rounds. That’s the same as The Players and even the WGC Match Play, and close to several other regular old PGA Tour events. It’s just not commensurate with what we should get for a major. We should be able to watch almost from the start and drop in throughout. Instead, TNT won’t be live on Friday until 2 p.m. ET.
That should be right about the time Tiger Woods is gearing up his second round alongside Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy. Of course there will be streaming options before that, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense for TNT to just be running episodes of Charmed and Supernatural all morning when there’s a major.
Anyways, the TV coverage should feature lots of technology, most importantly, buckets of TopTracer on every tee and several roamers in the fairways. It’s just, I wish it was on more these first two days. Here are your coverage options for Friday:
Television
2 to 8 p.m. — TNT
Online streams
Available on PGA.com and on mobile via PGA Championship and Bleacher Report Live app.
Radio
Noon to 8 p.m. — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208) or on PGA.com

Friday’s Tee Times

The PGA is a logistical marvel. It does not have the benefit of as much daylight as the U.S. Open, which falls during the longest days of the year. The British Open, of course, has all the daylight you could need and only needs to send the players off one tee rolling across 11 hours. They always have ample time and rarely get the kind of storms that suspend play.
But the PGA? The PGA has less daylight and often deals with a prime thunderstorm season, as we saw through most of the practice days this week. It’s got the same size field as the two Opens — 156 players deep — but always needs a bit of good fortune to get everything done on time the first 36 holes.
It appears we’ll get some good weather these first two days, when that 156-man field will be off split tees in groups of three for some sun-up to sun-down golf. Here’s your tee sheet for the second round (all times ET).

Off No. 1 tee:

  • 7:50 a.m. -- Danny Balin, Chesson Hadley, Russell Henley
  • 8:01 a.m. -- Marty Jertson, Like List, Kevin Chappell
  • 8:12 a.m. -- Jaysen Hansen, Nick Watney, Kyle Stanley
  • 8:23 a.m. -- Ted Potter, Jr., Emiliano Grillo, Jorge Campillo
  • 8:34 a.m. -- Ryan Fermeer, Paul Broadhurst, John Daly
  • 8:45 a.m. -- Si Woo Kim, Brice Garnett, Tyrrell Hatton
  • 8:56 a.m. -- Y.E. Yang, Jason Dufner, Shaun Micheel
  • 9:07 a.m. -- Thorbjorn Olesen, Charl Schwartzel, Patrick Cantlay
  • 9:18 a.m. -- Brendan Steele, Adrian Otaegui, Kevin Na
  • 9:29 a.m. -- Chez Reavie, Charley Hoffman, Russell Knox
  • 9:40 a.m. -- Zach J. Johnson, Michael Kim, Seungsu Han
  • 9:51 a.m. -- Brian Smock, Anirban Lahiri, Mike Lorenzo-Vera
  • 10:02 a.m. -- Ben Kern, Chris Kirk, Ryuko Tokimatsu
  • 1:20 p.m. -- Jamie Lovemark, Rich Berberian, Jr., Shugo Imahira
  • 1:31 p.m. -- Brandt Snedeker, Sean McCarty, Haotong Li
  • 1:42 p.m. -- Jim Furyk, Tony Finau, Xander Schauffele
  • 1:53 p.m. -- Davis Love III, Martin Kaymer, Rich Beem
  • 2:04 p.m. -- Rickie Fowler, Hideki Matsuyama, Ian Poulter
  • 2:15 p.m. -- Henrik Stenson, Danny Willett, Pat Perez
  • 2:26 p.m. -- Phil Mickelson, Jason Day, Keegan Bradley
  • 2:37 p.m. -- Shubhankar Sharma, Jordan Smith, Scott Piercy
  • 2:48 p.m. -- Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods
  • 2:59 p.m. -- Matthew Fitzpatrick, Webb Simpson, Jhonattan Vegas
  • 3:10 p.m. -- Stewart Cink, Branden Grace, Ryan Moore
  • 3:21 p.m. -- Ross Fisher, Alexander Levy, Patton Kizzire
  • 3:32 p.m. -- Julian Suri, Sungjae Im, Craig Bowden

Off No. 10 tee:

  • 7:55 a.m. -- Johan Kok, Brandon Stone, Whee Kim
  • 8:06 a.m. -- Matt Wallace, Matt Dobyns, Beau Hossler
  • 8:17 a.m. -- Chris Wood, Alex Noren, Matt Kuchar
  • 8:28 a.m. -- Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson, Adam Scott
  • 8:39 a.m. -- Tommy Fleetwood, Satoshi Kodaira, Marc Leishman
  • 8:50 a.m. -- Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka, Francesco Molinari
  • 9:01 a.m. -- Gary Woodland, Sergio Garcia, Kevin Kisner
  • 9:12 a.m. -- Jordan Spieth, Jon Rahm, Justin Rose
  • 9:23 a.m. -- Aaron Wise, Paul Casey, Zach Johnson
  • 9:34 a.m. -- Louis Oosthuizen, Thomas Pieters, Bill Haas
  • 9:45 a.m. -- Jason Kokrak, Joaquin Niemann, Daniel Berger
  • 9:56 a.m. -- Omar Uresti, Justin Harding, Andrew Landry
  • 10:07 a.m. -- Matt Borchert, Chris Stroud, Andrew Putnam
  • 1:15 p.m. -- Michael Block, Eddie Pepperell, Ryan Fox
  • 1:26 p.m. -- Austin Cook, Carig Hocknull, Alexander Bjork
  • 1:37 p.m. -- Yusaku Miyazato, Bob Sowards, Scott Brown
  • 1:48 p.m. -- Rafa Cabrera Bello, Thomas Bjorn, James Hahn
  • 1:59 p.m. -- Billy Horschel, Ben An, Shane Lowry
  • 2:10 p.m. -- Brian Harman, Yuta Ikeda, Adam Hadwin
  • 2:21 p.m. -- Padraig Harrington, Jimmy Walker, Vijay Singh
  • 2:32 p.m. -- Bryson DeChambeau, Andy Sullivan, Kiradech Aphibarnrat
  • 2:43 p.m. -- Ryan Armour, Cameron Smith, Peter Uihlein
  • 2:54 p.m. -- Paul Dunne, J.B. Holmes, Dylan Frittelli
  • 3:05 p.m. -- Charles Howell III, Jason Schmuhl, Brian Gay
  • 3:16 p.m. -- David Muttitt, Ollie Schniederjans, Troy Merritt
  • 3:27 p.m. -- Shawn Warren, Mikko Korhonen, J.J. Spaun

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