Pat McAfee pauses show to deliver breaking news | Golf News

A typical broadcast of The Pat McAfee Show took a shocking twist this week when a textual content message arrived live on air, breaking away from an NFL dialogue to deliver major golf news. In the center of the episode, McAfee shared a textual content confirming that ESPN will broadcast live motion from the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open on its main tv community.

The revelation represented a important development not only for this system itself, but for golf tv coverage more broadly, given that ESPN has principally averted live broadcasts of regular-season PGA Tour competitions for close to 20 years. The coverage will focus on the first two rounds of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.

The announcement’s timing is hardly unintentional. The Farmers Insurance Open indicators the official PGA Tour comeback of Brooks Koepka, a five-time major winner who hasn’t participated in a commonplace Tour competitors since March 2022.

Koepka is staging his return to the Tour via the newly established Returning Member Program, having departed LIV Golf in December before being reinstated earlier this month.

In an added twist, the PGA Tour announced that Koepka will characteristic prominently during ESPN’s live broadcast window. He’s been paired with Max Homa, who captured the 2023 Farmers Insurance Open, and Ludvig Åberg, winner of last 12 months’s Genesis Invitational.

The trio will serve as a featured group on PGA Tour LIVE Thursday, a level that McAfee also emphasised during his broadcast announcement. Though the community has historically supplied early-round Masters coverage, this represents its first live telecast of a non-major PGA Tour event in close to 20 years.

ESPN will concurrently stream the coverage on Hulu and Disney+, considerably broadening viewership for Koepka’s comeback. In addition to Koepka’s pairing, ESPN’s broadcast window is anticipated to highlight a number of high-profile groupings.

Title holder Harris English will be a part of forces with Xander Schauffele and current U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun, while past Farmers winners Jason Day and Justin Rose have been matched with Hideki Matsuyama. Chris Gotterup, coming off his Sony Open triumph, will compete alongside Keegan Bradley and Adam Scott.

The Farmers Insurance Open makes use of a dual-course format, with rivals rotating between Torrey Pines’ North and South programs during the opening two rounds before all weekend motion shifts completely to the South Course.

To facilitate Koepka’s comeback, organizers have enlarged the sector to 147 gamers while guaranteeing no beforehand dedicated entrants had been bumped from the roster.