Canadian golf viewers miss start of Open Championship for second consecutive year

A programming mishap seems to have ruined the start of the Open Championship for Canadian viewers for the second consecutive year.

According to a report by Coleman Bentley in Golf Digest, early risers in Canada who were planning on catching the beginning of this year’s Open Championship, which began in the overnight hours in North America, “were greeted by golf instruction content instead.” For the second straight year, it appears as if several local affiliates forgot to switch Golf Channel’s feed from its instructional content to live tournament coverage, with some social media users claiming the outage lasted up to five hours before it was fixed. Other users claimed it was actually the third consecutive year this had happened.

First- and second-round Open Championship coverage in Canada was slated to air on Golf Channel. In the United States, that coverage is airing on USA Network. It appears as if local cable providers simply left the U.S. feed running, which was airing instructional video when coverage began at 4 a.m. ET, rather than swapping the feed to tournament coverage.

Per Golf Digest, the outage occurred across multiple Canadian television providers, including Rogers and Bell. Rogers, for its part, responded to at least one frustrated fan on social media, noting it had “advised [its] partners who are investigating.”

We’re sorry to hear the feed for the British Open Championship wasn’t airing as it should be this morning on The Golf Channel, we have advised our partners who are investigating. ^rm

— RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) July 16, 2026

Hopefully everything will be squared away for the second round, which will begin at the same time early tomorrow morning.