Alexander Bjork tees off on the 15th hole at TPC Summerlin on Friday.
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The pros, forever attuned to the mantra of one shot at a time, were suddenly staring at a whole day.
Golf.com? This was more weather.com.
said Ryan Moore: “I mean, great weather this morning for what’s potentially coming this afternoon and tomorrow.”
said Taylor Pendrith: “Conditions are going to get tricky, I think, over the next day and a half. I just have to get through this.”
said JT Poston: “Tomorrow we’re just going to try to whitewash it and try to post everything we can post.”
The thoughts came on Thursday, after the first round match in the Shriners Open for Kids in Las Vegas, where conditions were calm but the forecast was foreboding. Strong desert winds were approaching, but knowing them was one thing. The confrontation was another.
The decline, in order, appeared:
– An announcement from the PGA Touraround 5:30 a.m. local time, that game would be delayed two hours.
– A second announcementaround 7 a.m., this added another two hours to the delay. Play was now set to begin at 10:55 a.m. as officials waited for winds as strong as 50 mph to settle into something more playable.
“We just didn’t feel, given the 50 mph winds, it was safe for those people to be operating at those early hours,” tournament head umpire Stephen Cox said later in the day on the Golf Channel. “We needed extra time to assess the damage and we needed extra time from a security perspective to secure what was there.
“And at that time the forecast was going to drop in terms of the intensity well approximated, and we felt that at 10:55, those four hours, that allowed us to do what we needed to do and have those winds drop.”
– A third noticearound 11 a.m., said fans would not be allowed to enter TPC Summerlin. Read the statement: “Second-round play at the Shriners Children’s Open began at 10:55 a.m. PT after a four-hour delay due to high winds. Out of an abundance of caution for spectator safety, the gates at the Shriners Children’s Open are closed to all spectators on Friday, October 18, until further notice. General admission and hospitality tickets for Friday will be honored on Saturday at TPC Summerlin.
– A battle.
The game started, but with winds still hovering around 25 mph, the scores picked up. In the first round, the 18-hole stroke average was 68.779; in the second round, it was 71,630. Among those who completed the second round on Friday (play was eventually suspended due to darkness), Doug Ghim shot a seven-under 64 over the first 18 holes and a 70 over the second. JJ Spaun it went 65-69. Jacob Bridgeman went 65-70. Kevin Streelman it went 67-76. There were exceptions, of course, the most prominent of them Pierceson Coodywho opened with a 72, followed by a 65 to move up the leaderboard.
Then there was Joseph Bramlett. On Thursday, he shot a 64, and on Friday, he was 11-under — with five of those shots coming after he had hit his second shot to 10 feet on the par-4 1. He missed the birdie putt. And par shot. And easy throw. And double putt, before making a 2-footer for three. One shot with five shots. In particular, the pros are called upon enough from the tee to the green to maneuver the ball in the most difficult conditions – but the wind can often wreak havoc closer to and on the putting surface. As Bramlett said, his pants visibly sagged.
“Your mind is spinning so much,” analyst Smiley Kaufman said on the air.
Notably, a distinct wave advantage was also forming. Remember those thoughts at the beginning of this article? They were among the players who played in the morning on Thursday, then didn’t stop until late Friday when conditions improved – as Thursday afternoon’s swell battled the worst of Friday afternoon’s wind.
So what did he do? those do the players think?
Most, understandably, were relieved.
Said Greyson Sigg, who was part of the first group away on Friday: “I’m happy to be at the club now. Some guys were giving me grief walking through the green. ‘Why didn’t you all play this morning?’ I said, ‘You guys are going to have a good afternoon there. You will enjoy it. I’m really excited to go home and get some rest.”
Ghim said: “Yes, maybe it was a test of patience. It’s usually when it’s so windy. I think the hardest part was trying to figure out when we were going to play. I think I was at the fitness trailer at 5 this morning. You can’t be caught off guard and expect to be late and not ready.
“So to wake up so early and then we’d have a two-hour delay, then another two-hour delay, and it felt like another two-hour delay, and all of a sudden they were like, we’re going to play, that was probably the hardest part of the day. But glad to be in. I feel like I played pretty good golf. Hopefully the wind will continue to blow.”
What about the weekend?
Our friends in weather.com winds are forecast to be 14 mph Saturday and 5 mph Sunday.
