2020 PGA Championship: Viewer’s guide, TV times, how to watch

ESPN and CBS step in to provide East Coast viewers with a rare treat this week: primetime major-championship golf

Finally. We made it. Give yourself a high-five. The year’s first major championship is upon us. The PGA Championship will be played this week at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco.

Because of the global coronavirus pandemic and the PGA Tour’s revised schedule this year, it’s been 13 months since golf’s most recent major championship. The schedule has been turned so far upside down that golf fans might not recall that Brooks Koepka will be the two-time defending champion at the PGA. He’ll enter the week battling through a lingering injury to his left knee that seems still to be giving him issues.

It’ll also be only the second tournament since the season restart in early June for Tiger Woods. Remember him? It’s hard to imagine that Woods could be a factor this week, given his T-40 result July 19 at the Memorial Tournament in his only PGA Tour start since February, but stranger things have happened. After all, Woods, a native Californian, attended nearby Stanford University and won the 2005 WGC American Express Invitational at Harding Park. And then there’s the fact that he holds four Wanamaker trophies among his 82 PGA Tour victories.

The top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking are in the field, including Australian Adam Scott, who will be making his first appearance since the season restarted. In fact, 95 of the top 100 players in the world were scheduled to compete this week.

This also happens to be the first week in which the TV coverage might be markedly different. ESPN and CBS will broadcast the PGA, after weeks of Golf Channel and CBS providing coverage of the PGA Tour. The usual coverage will be severely limited because of personnel restrictions tied to the COVID-19 protocols, but the total number of hours will be robust. Coverage starts with the practice rounds Tuesday and Wednesday on ESPN+, which requires a subscription.

The first and second rounds will be shown by with a combination of ESPN and ESPN+. Weekend rounds will feature coverage from ESPN, ESPN+ and CBS. East Coast viewers can enjoy primetime coverage from the Pacific Time Zone.

Here is the schedule (all times EDT):

Network	Thursday (Round 1)	Friday (Round 2)	Saturday (Round 3)	Sunday (Round 4)
ESPN+*	10 a.m.-4 p.m.	10 a.m.-4 p.m.	11 a.m.-1 p.m.	10 a.m.-noon
ESPN	4-10 p.m.	4-10 p.m.	1-4 p.m.	Noon-3 p.m.
CBS			4-10 p.m.	3-9 p.m.

*ESPN+ requires a subscription

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