Golfers must contend with challenging weather conditions at Torrey Pines
Jimmy Walker, right, stands under an umbrella on the 11th tee box during the final round of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.
Reporting from LA JOLLA — A witches brew of weather — to borrow from Shakespeare — turned a golf endeavor into “double, double, toil and trouble†Sunday at a PGA Tour event.
Stranger still, the wet, blustery, tree-bending scene was San Diego and the Torrey Pines South Course, not Scotland and the more spacious and forgiving St. Andrews.
It was largely futile, this task of landing wind-blown, wet golf balls on Torrey’s narrow fairways and making a good score.
The one exception was Brandt Snedeker, a Tennessean with a scrambler’s game. The only golfer to break par Sunday in the fourth round of the Farmers Insurance Open, he shot a 69 at the South course before a third weather delay postponed the final round until Monday.
Snedeker showed a deft touch afterward too, when he likened the job to “playing a British Open on a U.S. Open setup.â€
“That was a very good line. Exactly it,†CBS analyst Nick Faldo, who won three British Opens and three Masters, said afterward while looking across the course from the La Jolla Torrey Pines Hilton.
Faldo, an Englishman, was grateful to be in the broadcast tower behind the South Course’s 18th hole, rather than trying to fend on the course.
He ticked off the golfers’ challenges.
“Tough golf course. Water. Rough. And suddenly you’ve got to play in a nice balmy day from St. Andrews,†he said.
It was slot-machine golf; there was no telling what you’d get.
“You’re totally guessing on picking the club,†Faldo said. “You think you hit a great shot, and it hits a wind wall. It’s a total guess.â€
Just how bad was the weather for golf?
“One of the caddies told me it’s the worst he’s seen, and he’s been doing it for 20-some years,†said Wayne Birch, the caddie for Andrew Loupe.
When Loupe surveyed a 115-yard approach to the South’s fifth hole, he entrusted the job to his seven-iron, normally good for 185 yards. The full-swing hit led to a birdie.
Taking aim, golfers anticipated the wind would blow some shots 35 yards sideways.
For all the vagaries of windy golf, swirling rains such as these, Faldo said, are even more nettlesome.
“That horrible dampness, it’s a blanket rain,†he said. “It gets everywhere. It comes upwards. When it rains, it kind of bounces off you. But that stuff, you’re just drenched. Every crease. It just sticks to you. Every time you take your hands off the club, now the grip is wet. Your hand is wet. What do you do?
“It’s a pain in the butt, that rain.â€
After the third delay, tour officials announced that play might resume at 3:30 p.m. Ultimately, the decision to hold off until Monday came from Mark Russell, the tour’s vice president of rules and competition.
Faldo said the weather gave Russell no other choice.
“Oh, there was a squally thing going on over at 18,†he said. “There was no way you could put the golf ball down on the green. We had gusts that, they were hitting our tower at 36 [mph] and up. They said it might go to 50. It’s brutal.
Think again
Kevin Streelman was only two shots off the lead when play was suspended Sunday, and he knows one
shot he’d like to have back if he can’t make that up in his final five holes Monday.
Streelman had rallied with three birdies in his first six holes in the fourth round to get a share of the lead at eight under. Then at the difficult par-four seventh, a marshal yelled at a fan while Streelman took his backswing, and the golfer sliced his shot right into the canyon. Streelman fumed, throwing his club and hat on the ground.
After a drop he needed three more shots to make a double-bogey six.
Kim’s struggles
Michael Kim, a Torrey Pines High alum, was only two shots off the lead going into the final round, but struggled badly in the weather. He bogeyed four of his first five holes and made a double-bogey seven at the par-five fifth when he needed five strokes to get down from 89 feet.
Two holes later, at the par-three eighth, Kim holed out a 60-foot bunker shot for birdie. He was even par, seven shots off the lead and playing the 12th hole, when the round was suspended.
Chip-ins
Of Snedeker’s seven PGA Tour victories, four have been in come-from-behind fashion. In addition to his playoff win at Torrey Pines in 2012, Snedeker came from six strokes back at the 2011 RBC Heritage, five strokes back at the 2007 Wyndham Championship and one stroke back at the 2015 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
The highest final-round scoring average on the PGA Tour came in the 1999 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at 79.38. The scoring average Sunday for those who had finished at Torrey Pines was 78.9.
Go beyond the scoreboard
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