PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — This yr’s Gamers Championship, a signature occasion of the PGA Tour, will take an additional day to finish after torrential rains on Friday in northern Florida suspended play for a second consecutive day. Golfers endured Friday’s foul climate for only some soggy hours on the T.P.C. Sawgrass golf course, at some point after the primary spherical was twice interrupted by rain delays and by no means accomplished.
The back-to-back postponements will be certain that the 72-hole, four-round event, scheduled to finish on Sunday afternoon, won’t end earlier than Monday for the primary time since 2005.
Giant puddles had change into widespread on most greens by 10 a.m. on Friday, and upkeep crews used squeegees to take away water after every group completed a gap. However in time, with fairways all however flooded, officers ordered gamers off the course. The primary spherical continues to be not full.
“The golf course has simply reached some extent of saturation, and sadly the climate situations will not be offering us any reduction,” Gary Younger, the chief referee of the occasion, stated late Friday afternoon.
Younger added that the golf course had acquired virtually three inches of rain within the earlier 36 to 48 hours and that the event will restart no ahead of 11 a.m. on Saturday. The third spherical won’t be accomplished Sunday, and extreme climate was anticipated within the space Friday night time into Saturday morning, together with wind gusts that would attain 60 miles an hour. However the tour is anticipating clearer climate by noon Saturday regardless that the T.P.C. Sawgrass structure will almost certainly nonetheless be topic to appreciable wind.
The situations, coupled with a difficult Pete Dye-designed course that options a number of daunting pictures over water hazards, may make for unpredictable outcomes. Furthermore, the final-round leaders shall be pressured to finish greater than 18 holes on Monday.
On Friday morning, Younger stated the tour was doubtlessly contemplating a Tuesday end to the occasion, however hours later he stated, “We really feel very assured that we’re going to have the ability to accomplish the conclusion of this championship on Monday night.” A final spherical on Tuesday was “not likely in our thought course of,” Younger stated.
It’s the eighth time that the Gamers Championship, which was first contested in 1974, won’t end on Sunday. Whereas Monday finishes are rare on the PGA Tour and at main championships — the final Monday end on the Masters event was 1983 — they don’t seem to be unheard-of, and gamers have typically realized to adapt.
“You simply know that you simply’re right here hopefully till the very finish of the event, and also you simply get on with it,” stated Tommy Fleetwood, who was one of some dozen golfers to finish 18 holes on Thursday and is tied for the lead at six underneath par. “Everyone’s in the identical circumstances. When it’s your flip to play, you play.
“It’s straightforward to get caught off guard whenever you’re hanging round for a very long time after which unexpectedly it’s important to attempt to change it again on. However you virtually should loosen up as a lot as you possibly can and save your vitality however all the time sort of keep prepared and in that mind-set that you simply is perhaps going out at any time,” Fleetwood stated.
