Gale force winds? Rules breaks? Buckle up for Saturday at the Players

Brice Garnett may be co-leading this Players Championship. But his pace of play? Well …  

During Thursday’s first round, he hit two shots — a tee shot down the left side of the fairway on 10, and a second shot to the fringe — before play was called due to darkness. On Friday, he hit 45 shots — his last was a tee shot on 5, also down the left side of the fairway — when the horn sounded because of storms. On Saturday, Garnett will play four-plus holes. At some point. Maybe. Add that all up, and that’s … over 40 hours to finish 18 holes at TPC Sawgrass. (Of course, if he were paying the public fee of upward of $840, he’d at least be getting his full money’s worth.)    

“We knew it was going to be a long day potentially today,” Garnett said after the second part of his first round. “We were just trying to stay in the moment and not get too ahead of ourself with all the rain. It’s something exciting.”

It’s something, all right. Garnett’s odyssey is one of a few Players Championship irregularities caused by a three-day storm over Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. How will Sawgrass play when golf resumes (hopefully) on Saturday? What will the round look like? What type of player is best suited for one of the more unusual Players Championships? Let’s take a look.  

The bad news for players 

You never want to see a black exclamation point in an orange circle when checking the weather for golf, but there it was on weather.com, in the middle of the page, after a search for Ponte Vedra Beach. And the message to the right of it? “Gale warning.” In other words, it’s not going to be just a tickle of wind on Saturday; it will be a slap. 

While the worst of it will be over when play does begin (there are whispers of gusts of over 60 mph), it’ll still be enough to send players’ golf balls — and hats and anything else not firmly attached — every which way. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m, according to weather.com, the wind will be blowing at no less than 20 mph. A break does come at 6 p.m. — a 19 mph wind. 

Good luck hitting the island-green 17th. 

The good news for players 

It’s not all dire. As windy as it will be, it will likely be as muddy on Saturday, and while it will dirty more than a few shoes and pants, it likely won’t any players’ golf balls. So long as they’re in the fairway. 

During the first round, the preferred lies rule — the lifting, cleaning and placing of a ball not in the rough or sand — was in effect, and it will be for the second round and perhaps beyond. The benefits? No misfires due to mud. A lie under the player’s control.  

“I’m not going to hit that golf ball with anything on it if I can clean it,” Jon Rahm said Thursday. “Yeah, every time I was in the fairway, chip shots, anything, that ball was lifted, cleaned and tried to find the best possible lie I could hit.”  

The rain also opens up a few other doors. Embedded balls (due to mud) and temporary water will likely pop up more frequently, and players will have relief options for both. Embeds are covered under rule 16.3, and temporary water is addressed under 16.1 — co-leader Tommy Fleetwood took full advantage of the latter on Thursday, when his second shot was jailed in a patch of trees, only for him to move his ball to the right due to a puddle, creating a path for a shot.   

“The thing is, where he’s dropping, he’s actually going to have a window up there to get him up by the green,” on-course analyst John Wood said on the Golf Channel broadcast. “If he had to play it where it was, he had absolutely nothing.” 

But maybe the best part of the storms? Softer greens. No more scenes from last week, where balls zipped through baked-out putting surfaces at the Arnold Palmer.  

“It’s very receptive,” Kramer Hickok said on Thursday’s Golf Channel broadcast. “Greens are really soft. Fairways have done a really nice job of drying out, so you’re still getting some run out, so the course is actually playing pretty short. But it’s pretty easy to attack some of these flags. 

The uncertainty

Golf will almost assuredly be played Saturday, but as to when, chief referee Gary Young could offer only this:

“Our plan is to resume play tomorrow, no earlier than 11 a.m.,” he said. “That would be the earliest. The rules committee will arrive early tomorrow morning. We will assess the weather situation with Wade Stettner, our meteorologist, and at that point, we will have a better idea of what is happening with this severe weather system that we’re expecting to come through the area sometime between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. tomorrow. That is the projected arrival.”

In short, it could be 11. Or noon. Or 1 p.m. So the wait begins. And then the wait continues. The first round will finish. And those players — the original Thursday afternoon wave — will turn around for the second round — they were also the original Friday morning wave. At some point after that, the original Friday afternoon wave — those pros who did play on Thursday — will get out. 

And that’s assuming players will have no problems with 20 mph-winds, mud balls, embedded balls and temporary water, not to mention one of Pete Dye’s most Dyeabolical layouts. 

“We’re just battling, trying to make up for lost time,” Young said. “We also know that the conditions we’re going to be facing tomorrow with the winds that are predicted, the pace of play is going to be slower as well. So we’re trying to factor all of this in our projections.”

So who has the advantage?

Patience was already at a premium, but tack on possibly two extra days, and even Mother Teresa would crack. The winner will be someone who doesn’t bend easy. The original Thursday afternoon-Friday morning wave will have a long day, the Thursday morning-Friday afternoon groups will have a long wait.  

Another hint at a potential champion? While looking at the player hitting the clubs, take a peek at the person carrying them. Consider this exchange between Wood, a former caddie, and analyst Gary Koch on the Friday broadcast on Golf Channel. 

“John, what was the hardest part of being a caddie in these conditions?” Koch asked. 

“It was just taking your time,” he said. “Sometimes you get rushed with decisions because maybe you took a little time with cleaning a grip or something like that. Everyone is going to play slower in these conditions, you got to realize that, and not let your player get out of sorts and get out of his normal rhythm.”

“Did you wish you had more than two arms?” Koch asked. 

“Oh yeah. Three or four of them would have been great.” Wood said.  

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Nick Piastowski

Golf.com Editor

Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.