2026 TOUR Championship: Live, Predictions, TV Schedule & How to Watch

Min Woo Lee leads the 2026 TOUR Championship on 8 under, after a Thursday 62 that matched his career best in his first appearance in the event.

Behind him, the more unusual number: not one player in the field shot over par in Round 1.

Round 2 is under way at East Lake as this is published. Here is where things stood, how to watch the rest of it, and who is actually in range.

What is the live leaderboard at the TOUR Championship?

Round 1 finished with Lee two clear. These are the completed Round 1 scores — Round 2 was in progress at 11:58 a.m. ET on Friday and every position in it is moving, so for live numbers use the PGA TOUR leaderboard rather than this table.

The whole field is inside eight shots and nobody is over par. With starting strokes abolished, everyone began the week level, so the board you see is simply four rounds of golf — and after one of them, 26 of 29 players are under par.

How can you watch the TOUR Championship on TV?

Two networks, and they do not overlap. ESPN has the mornings on Thursday and Friday only. Golf Channel has the afternoons all week.

Note the Sunday start time moves forward an hour, to noon ET, which is the one on this list people miss.

Golf Channel also runs same-night replays: Round 2 again at 9:00 p.m. ET Friday, Round 3 at 10:00 p.m. Saturday. Its pre-round show, Golf Central Pregame, starts an hour before each live window.

One caveat, stated plainly: those are the windows ESPN and Golf Channel publish on their own schedules. We could not source an NBC window from any page we could read — Golf Channel’s listing understandably only carries Golf Channel, ESPN’s release only ESPN, and nbc.com is geoblocked from where this was checked. If NBC picks up part of the weekend, check a local listing.

How do you stream every round?

PGA TOUR LIVE on the ESPN App, which carries all four rounds in full rather than in windows.

Per ESPN’s own release, the app runs four simultaneous feeds at East Lake — a main feed plus marquee and featured groups, key holes, and a Betcast feed — as the closing part of more than 100 hours across the three FedExCup Playoffs events. App coverage began Thursday at 11:00 a.m. ET and runs from the first tee shot each day to the end of play.

The distinction that matters:

If you want to watch a specific player rather than the broadcast’s chosen groups, the app is the only route.

What are Friday’s tee times?

Round 2 went off between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. ET, in reverse order of position — leaders last. Times below are Eastern, which is East Lake’s own time zone.

A warning about time zones if you look this up yourself. The PGA TOUR leaderboard localises tee times to wherever it thinks you are — it served this page’s author GMT+8, which would have made Lee’s 2:00 p.m. slot read as “2:00 AM”. There is a Time Zone control on the leaderboard with an Event Time EDT setting. Use it before you write anything down.

Who are the contenders after Round 1?

Form and record only — this site does not publish betting prices for any event, so there are none here.

Min Woo Lee (−8). The 62 matched his career best and it is his TOUR Championship debut, which cuts both ways: no East Lake history to draw on, and no history of coming back to the field here either. Two clear with 54 holes left is a lead, not a result.

Scottie Scheffler (−5). World No. 1 and the FedExCup leader arriving. He is three back having played, by the TOUR’s own account, with hands that were bothering him earlier in the week and are now better. Of everyone on the board he is the one whose baseline expectation is highest regardless of position.

Viktor Hovland (−6). Round 1 was a personal best for him at this event, driven by putting rather than ball-striking. Putting weeks are the least reliable kind to extrapolate from, which is the honest caveat on an otherwise excellent start.

Collin Morikawa (−6). Bogeyed the opening hole and then made no further mistakes. A clean card is a better sign at East Lake than a wild one of the same number.

Chris Gotterup (−6). A three-time winner already in 2026, so the form is not a fluke of one round.

Rory McIlroy (−2). World No. 2, this year’s Masters champion, and a three-time FedExCup champion — nobody in the field knows how to win this specific week better. Six back after one round is unremarkable for him.

Ryan Fox and Adam Scott (−4). Both opened 66, and Fox holed out for eagle in what was his first competitive round at East Lake.

The group that needs Friday. Cameron Young, Russell Henley and Kristoffer Reitan all opened level. In a 29-man field with no cut, they are not going home — but eight shots back of a leader who is not obliged to come backwards is a lot to find in three rounds.

Why is ESPN showing golf this week?

Because 2026 is the first year ESPN has carried the FedExCup Playoffs on linear TV — and the TOUR Championship windows are the last two of six.

ESPN’s release is blunt about how unusual this is: the network last carried live coverage of the TOUR Championship in 2006, the year before the FedExCup Playoffs existed at all. Twenty years later it is back, with what it describes as 12 total hours of linear playoff coverage across the three events, on top of the streaming package.

The production is being given the full treatment — extra cameras and drones, enhanced player audio, and 3D hole and course modelling from PGA TOUR Studios — and it is being cross-promoted through SportsCenter, Get Up and The Pat McAfee Show.

One detail we could not settle: the PGA TOUR says host Michael Eaves is broadcasting from PGA TOUR Studios in Florida, while ESPN’s own release places him at East Lake. Two primary sources, one contradiction, and it does not affect what you see on screen.

What happened to J.J. Spaun?

He withdrew during Round 1 with a shoulder injury, taking the field from 30 to 29.

That has a visible consequence on the broadcast: an odd number of players means one goes out alone, and on Friday that was Cameron Young, off first at 11:00 a.m. by himself. There is no cut at the TOUR Championship, so the remaining 29 all play four rounds.

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