Sunday’s final round at the Masters will have an odd look and untraditional schedule

A severe weather forecast and an aversion to the Monday finish has forced the Masters to dramatically alter the usual Sunday plans.

In a rare and dramatic departure from tradition, the final round of the Masters will start on Sunday at 7:30 a.m. with the players going off split tees in groups of three. The tournament made the change to try to avoid severe thunderstorms that are expected late in the afternoon in Augusta on Sunday.

The tournament should finish a little before or right around 2 p.m. ET. The change will condense the entire field into a two-hour window of tee times. The individual rounds will take longer in groups of three, lasting five hours or longer as they did the first two rounds. But the round as a whole moves much faster with everyone on the course at the same time. If we begin at 7:30 a.m. ET, the last groups of the day will tee off on No. 1 and No. 10 around 9:30 a.m. ET. So we’re looking at a final round that lasts, in total, about seven hours as opposed to the typical final round that runs nine hours or more.

It’s not uncommon for an event on the PGA Tour to make this move. The Tour is overcautious about it, choosing to move tee times up and utilize split tees when there is any threatening weather on a weekend day. If given the choice between an altered schedule on Sunday or a Monday finish, the PGA Tour will always take the altered schedule on the weekend day. The broadcast may be tape delayed frustrating the TV partner and sponsors, but a Monday finish during workday hours is even worse. That’s the choice the Masters faced if the forecast, which is calling for an 80 percent chance of thunderstorms after 4 p.m., is to be believed.

Unlike a regular PGA Tour event, however, the Masters is obviously not going to be shown on tape delay. CBS will be on the air at 9 a.m. ET, which should be just before the last few groups tee off in the final round. The leaders should tee off around 9:20am ET — which means we’re headed for around a 2pm finish. So, yeah, no prime-time broadcast, which won’t make CBS execs hoping for big-time Tiger ratings super happy.

With such a small field, the Masters almost never utilizes split tees, including in the first two rounds. The entire field rolls off No. 1 throughout the day on Thursday and Friday, with ample daylight to accommodate it. The U.S. Open and PGA Championship, by comparison, send a 156-man field off split tees for sun-up to sun-down golf just to get the first 36 holes in at their championship. Starting a round off No. 10 at the Masters is anathema. The same goes for The Open Championship, where the daylight can run for 17 hours or more that far north in July and everyone goes off No. 1.

The Masters used split tees for the first three rounds in 2005, Tiger Woods’ last win at Augusta National. They did not do it for the final round. There has not been a Monday finish at the Masters since 1983, so that’s exceedingly rare as well. The majors have been blessed with enough good scheduling and weather fortune over the past decade and narrowly dodged those Monday finishes on multiple occasions. Unless some storms in the morning pop up or the afternoon wave of storms comes sooner than expected, it appears we’re in line for another Sunday finish this year at the Masters. It will just feel a bit odd coming five hours earlier in the afternoon and with players going off two tees.

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