A first for the Open Championship

While two-tee starts are common on the PGA Tour on Thursdays and Fridays, the extreme amount of daylight available in England in the summer (Friday for example the sun rose at Royal Liverpool at 5:07 and set at 9:30), the R&A were able to schedule 156 players in groups of three teeing off starting at 6:25am with the last group teeing off at 4:06pm, all teeing off on the first hole. In fact, never before has the Open had a two-tee start, but that all changes tomorrow.

Ironically enough, the Open's first two-tee start will be on a Saturday, a day when most PGA Tour events only use one tee. This is due to inclement weather expected in the afternoon, around 3pm, so they hope to have all players off the course by then. Rather than using the typical 36 tee times for the 72 players, there are only 12 tee times, spanning from 9am to 11:01am, in 11-minute intervals. There are 24 groups of 3, but the bottom half (currently in 37th to 72nd place) will tee off from 10. The players teeing off from 10 are in reverse order, which means that while Tiger Woods would normally be in the first pairing of the day, he's actually now going to tee off at the same time as Rory, in the final group of the day, just at a different tee.

ESPN3 will have live coverage from the first tee at 9am (4 AM ET), while ESPN picks up live coverage at 5 AM ET, when approximate half of the players will have already started their rounds. The Tiger Channel on ESPN3 begins coverage immediately at 6:01 AM ET, when Tiger tees off.

Click here for a list of all of tomorrow's tee times.

Tomorrow's TV schedule:
The Open Championship Third Round (5 AM ET, ESPN)
The Tiger Channel (6:01 AM ET, ESPN3)