When Bud Cauley rolled in his short birdie try on the par-5 16th hole in the opening round of Players Championshiphe was enjoying a solid, if unspectacular, round: four birdies against two bogeys to keep him very much in the mix on a day when no player in the early wave could manage better than Mav McNealy’s five-under 67.
Even the most casual fan knows what follows 16 on Pete Day’s famous Stadium Course: par-3 17th iconwhere players, from approximately 140 yards, are required to hit a green surrounded by water. In any other setting, it would be nothing to the world’s most skilled players – but when the green rings with thousands of fans plus a massive corporate hospitality build-up, mix with the club’s winds and indecision and the pressure from one of the marquee game events, the generous 4,000 square meter target can feel more like 400 square metres. It’s not a shot you want to think too much about, and yet many players will tell you that from the moment they step onto the court, the 17 takes up real estate in their temporal lobes.
Cauley birdied the first hole Thursday, so he had 16 holes to ponder his fate at 17. Which turned into 16 and then some.
That’s because moments after Cauley had crossed the 16, a horn sounded, signaling the suspension of play due to a swirling storm cell. To escape from downpourCauley and his partners, Vince Whaley and Chandler Phillips, took refuge in the back of a van, with only their thoughts for company.
“The first thing I thought was, is the wind going to change? Because that happens a lot when a storm blows up,” Cauley said after the round. “We kind of had it down the left before the delay, which wasn’t too bad.”
The layoff turned out to be brief – just 21 minutes – but when Cauley and his partners returned to the tee, they encountered markedly different conditions.
“From left down to straight pumping,” Cauley said of the wind direction. “Probably close to 30 meters.”
As in a 30-yard increase in effective distance, the putt was playing.
Cauley had the honor. “I was the first guy to hit, so I was kind of guessing,” he said.
Cauley said before the delay, he would have a wedge shot, but when he returned, the shot called for an 8-iron. “It landed a little off the middle of the green and rolled back into the fairway,” he said. “I was glad to be on the ground.”
From the front of the green, Cauley played his second shot to the back left fairway to four feet and saved his par.
He made another par on the difficult par-4 to finish at two under.
“It was difficult with the delay,” he said. “But I was happy to have two pars coming in.”
