Full tee times for Round 3 of Arnold Palmer Invitational

Hello darkness, my old friend. The PGA TOUR has come to talk to you again.

For the third straight week, at least one golfer won’t finish their round while on the last hole on Friday ahead of the cut. And we don’t blame Greg Koch and Justin Suh, the only two of 120 players on the course, one iota for choosing to come back tomorrow morning.

But don’t put them in this position the first place, tournament organizers. Especially in a limited-field “elevated event” with just 120 entrants.

Koch is in a fairway bunker on No. 9 (his 18th), and needs to make par or better to make the cut for the weekend. He’s a club pro that’s never made the weekend at a PGA TOUR event, so do whatever you need to do. But the knock-on effects mean the other seven players at +2 go to bed tonight unaware if they’ve made the cut or not.

There are currently 64 players at +1 or better following today’s action, and eight players (including Koch) at +2. As the cut line is the low 65 and ties, if Koch were to make birdie from the current jail he’s in on a very tough hole, he’ll send home the other seven without a paycheck. Those seven:

Ryan Fox
Russell Henley
Zach Johnson
S.H. Kim
Alex Noren
Seamus Power
Davis Thompson

But if he make bogey, he’ll join everyone at +3 or better and not play the weekend. And that means there’s got to be a better way to send players home after two days of competition.

Suh is at -2, so barring catastrophe he’s in good shape to play the weekend.

The tournament gets underway on Saturday with tee times likely starting at 7:40 a.m. ET. You can catch the action on PGA TOUR Live via ESPN+, which will also have extended streaming coverage of all 18 holes of the event and every player.

And that’s what we’re talking about instead of Kurt Kityama at -9 holding a two-shot lead over Jordan Spieth following some brutal wind and course conditions on Friday. Kityama looks for his first TOUR win, while Spieth his 14th.

Below is a projected list of tee times for Round 3 of the 2023 Arnold Palmer Invitational on Saturday, assuming Koch manages to make par on his final hole.