In Arnold Palmer, the biggest challenge is a matter of life and death

Shane Lowry looked at his kadi, Darren Reynoldsand laughed.

For the best part of the last five hours, Lowry had fought Bay Hill, and now – in his walk until the 18th Street – the battle was over. In the period between the wild, broken player, whose game can be similarly described, and Saturday at Arnold Palmer Invitational? Arnie won in a knockout.

“Better day tomorrow,” Lowry said as he looked at the score table, which had once shown his name in the lead, but now he was lit to discover the six strokes after Collin Morikawa.

Lowry was not only in his time of movement in Bay Hill. In fact, he was quite norms on Saturday – an afternoon in which one of the harshest challenges in PGA Tour gave birth to all his teeth. If the typical PGA Tour Golf voice column is a symphony of ovations, Saturday at Arnold Palmer can be best described by its crust of groans. Those who participated on Saturday afternoon prompted an impressive group of painful fraudsters while the best players in the world fought almost cartoons: rough that started this week at four inches and remained unworthy, painted painted as a checkerboard plank between abundant and soft landing areas, and as it may be. Cement.

“If they have a media day here on Monday, it will be a massacre,” Bones Mackay said. “Is it wicked quickly. ”

Officially, Mackay’s NBC Kevin Kisner teammate Reported, they were rolling to a 13 in Stimpmetri, which makes them fast and strong according to PGA Tour standards. But as the leaders approached the afternoon, the speed and rigidity of the greens in Bay Hill had changed clearly. The best golfists in the world were not just lost blows, they were trying to keep them within the overall proximity of the hole.

“You get to these greens and they are slippery,” said Collin Morikawa, owner of a Saturday 67, the second best round of the day. “I think only because there are no friction in the greens, or not? They’re as fast as you are hitting it even softer than you will do normally, so it’s just a very different way to play.”

Morikawa (-10) was one of the few players in the last groups on Saturday that survived unsafe. Lowry and his friend Rory Mcilroy each recorded results to faded from “on hunt” in mere drowsiness, while reigning the scottie Scheffler champion and his contendant Wyndham Clark saw their tour chances evaporate as the last points of moisture in those voices, which had oxidized to a green, from the end of the game.

It seems insignificant to talk about the physical appearance of a surface set in trying to understand the most important events of a golf tour, but in this case it is guaranteed. While most of the weeks in the tournaments are determined by lush surfaces, hosts that allow players to follow the pins like arrows in Cork, “greens” on Saturday at Arnold Palmer were determined by a very different group of physical characteristics.

“They’re glazed,” Jason Day said. “Whenever you put it down and start slipping into your bed … This is when you know the greens are becoming quite polished. They are changing color, and you can start seeing color change.”

A lighter color and a glossy surface helped to turn Bay Hill into what Keegan Bradley called the PGA Tour season “toughest test”. But more than the challenge is the predominant sense among some players in the field on Saturday that the Green at Arnold Palmer may be beating in a diligent issue of life and death.

“These greens are pretty crazy, they are rusty,” Michael Kim said. “I don’t know, I feel like 10 green can be dead. Trash is the only thing that is keeping it alive. But barely.”

Most in the field are begging that there is enough fertilizer left in the reservoir to survive on Sunday afternoon. Especially Collin Morikawa, who hopes to end a long line without a win in a tournament that would mark a regular (and rising) resume of PGA Tour as he enters his season at the age of 28.

A Cardigan hosts Morikawa on the other side of a terrible Sunday in Bay Hill, but that’s just it: Sunday will be the toughest test for everyone. The wind is expected to get once again when drivers are closed in the last round. Can a golf course already on the eve of surviving an increased challenge? This is the question in everyone’s mind on Saturday evening, but contrary to Lowry in 18, hopes are not high.

“With all the sun there, it will simply deteriorate,” Morikawa said.