A Rare Rainout Suspends Players Championship With Three Tied for Lead

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — This 12 months’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 just a few 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 sure 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 circumstances usually are not offering us any aid,” Gary Younger, the chief referee of the occasion, mentioned late Friday afternoon.

Younger added that the golf course had acquired nearly three inches of rain within the earlier 36 to 48 hours and that the event will restart no earlier than 11 a.m. on Saturday. The third spherical won’t be accomplished Sunday, and extreme climate was anticipated within the space Friday evening into Saturday morning, together with wind gusts that might attain 60 miles an hour. However the tour is anticipating clearer climate by noon Saturday although the T.P.C. Sawgrass structure will most certainly nonetheless be topic to appreciable wind.

The circumstances, 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 will likely be pressured to finish greater than 18 holes on Monday.

On Friday morning, Younger mentioned the tour was probably contemplating a Tuesday end to the occasion, however hours later he mentioned, “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 mentioned.

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 usually realized to adapt.

“You simply know that you just’re right here hopefully till the very finish of the event, and also you simply get on with it,” mentioned 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. “All people’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 impulsively you need to attempt to swap it again on. However you nearly should chill out as a lot as you’ll be able to and save your vitality however at all times sort of keep prepared and in that mind-set that you just is likely to be going out at any time,” Fleetwood mentioned.