Rain suddenly was the least of anyone’s problems on Saturday in The Players Championship.
Not with wind that was gusting to 65kph, making the island green look more like a postage stamp; not with temperatures plunging by the hour; and certainly not for the players who had to play 18 holes of a second round that was shaping up as among the toughest ever.
“This is as tough as golf as you’re ever going to play,” Keegan Bradley said after a one-under-par 71, which he called one of the best rounds of his life.
Photo: AFP
Justin Thomas and Bubba Watson did the unthinkable: They did not make a bogey.
Bradley would have joined them, except for a double bogey on the 16th hole when he was assessed a two-shot penalty for not playing his putt from where the wind had blown it away.
“You’re not really making that many swings. It’s just a lot of shots,” Thomas said after his 69, which featured a series of beautifully flighted shots and some numbers that showed just how much the wind was affecting them.
He hit two pitching wedges from 185 yards. He hit a five-wood from 193 yards. The most satisfying was a five-iron from 167 yards.
“Some of the most bizarre conditions I’ve played in,” Thomas said.
And to think The Players Championship is not even at the halfway point because of rain that dumped 10cm on the TPC Sawgrass and saturated the Stadium Course so much that it took 54 hours and 16 minutes from the start to the end of the first round.
When darkness halted play on Saturday evening, 27 players had yet to tee off in the second round.
Those who spent more than six hours on the course on Saturday held on for dear life, especially when they came to the notorious island green on the par-three 17th hole.
Over two days, only four players hit into the water. On Saturday when play resumed, the first four players could not find the green. By the end of the day, 29 balls had gone into the water.
Asked to describe the 17th, Brooks Koepka said: “It’s luck.”
In the second round, Taiwan’s C.T. Pan tied with eight players for 84th place with a five-over-par 77.
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