PGA Tour to move up Players Championship tee times with severe weather looming

The final round of The Players will start much earlier than normal due to a bad forecast in the afternoon.

A strong front is forecasted to move through Northeast Florida on Sunday afternoon, which has forced the PGA Tour to implement contingency plans for the final round of The Players.

According to Jason Sobel of SiriusXM Radio, the tour will have threesomes go off both the 1st and 10th tees on Sunday morning. The final group will tee off at around 10:00 a.m. ET, as tournament officials hope to complete the championship before the storms roll in. The first groups will go out at around 8:00 a.m. ET.

The tour made this move to avoid a Monday finish.

For perspective, the final pairing on Saturday, which featured Min Woo Lee and Akshay Bhatia, began their third rounds at 2:35 p.m. ET. But severe winds, with gusts blowing up to 30 miles per hour, wreaked havoc on Lee and Bhatia, who shot 4-over and 2-over on their opening nines, respectively.

The wild winds on Saturday are the beginning parts of this deadly front moving across the Southeastern United States. These gusts will return on Sunday morning, with a sustained breeze between 15 and 25 miles per hour coming out of the southeast. Gusts can reach up to 30 and will not subside as the day wears on.

As for television coverage, NBC and Golf Channel have yet to announce their plans. NBC came on the air at 2 p.m. ET on Saturday and was supposed to begin coverage at 1 p.m. ET on Sunday for the final round. But that will likely change now that the tour has switched things up because of the weather.

Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.