Minor Coverage of 2nd Golf Major

Ryan Fox fans hoping to watch his first round in this year’s PGA Championship will be frustrated that Sky’s coverage excludes a featured groups feed.

It won’t start until 5am Friday on Sky Sport 1 whereas the Kiwi golfer who chipped in to win the tournament play-off that qualified him for the Quail Hollow competition will tee off 11.05 tonight NZ time.

Originally, Sky planned to take a featured groups feed that would have screened from midnight and conceivably could have featured Fox, although this is by no means a given.

Golf fans also will miss out on seeing the first round of one of the greatest featured groups you could hope to score in a major: defending PGA champ Xander Schauffele, world #1 Scottie Scheffler and 2025 Masters winner Rory McIlroy.

The flipside is both this group and Fox’s will feature in Saturday’s telecast, when they tee off in the afternoon US time.

Putting aside the local hero angle, Sky’s coverage is disappointing when it delivered a choice of feeds for the Masters last month, complementing the main feed with coverage of featured groups and key holes.

“The PGA Championship will not have any additional feeds this coming weekend,” a Sky spokeswoman confirmed, noting the additional feed it had previously promoted is no longer part of the rights package it has secured for the tournament.

“While we will miss Ryan Fox tomorrow, we should get him the next day with his later tee-off for round two.

“Coverage can vary from major to major as each event is organised independently with different amounts of content and feeds tied into the broadcast rights.”

Incidentally, anyone who misses the Live from the Masters analyses that Sky axed a couple of years ago can catch many of the highlights on the the Golf Channel’s YouTube channel.

And as a curtain-raiser to the US Open next month, Apple TV+ will premiere June 4 the 10-part comedy Stick, in which Owen Wilson plays an over-the-hill, ex-pro golfer whose career was derailed prematurely 20 years ago.

After his marriage collapses and he’s fired from his job at a sports store, he bets his future on a troubled teenage golf phenomenon’s prospects.

Peter Dager, Marc Maron, Mariana Treviño, Lilli Kay, Judy Greer and Timothy Olyphant co-star. Here’s the trailer.