Notes from Bay Hill: Sunday

So much for sunny central Florida! The weather today ranged from almost chilly (early in the day) to nice to windy to threatening. I walked 19 today, 4 with Charles Howell III, Rod Pampling, and Marc Leishman, followed by 15 with Paul Goydos, Garrett Willis, and Ricky Barnes (I walked #6 twice). Groups went off split tees; “my” first group was the first of the groups off #1, the second the last of the groups off #10. Some notes from the day:

* The big story of the day was the weather, which halted play around 2:30 p.m. There will be a Monday finish. The interruption wasn’t very surprising to me; the sun really never came out, and by late on the first nine with the Goydos/Willis/Barnes group, I was already noting the sky with some concern. Somewhere around the 3rd hole, Willis told members of his family that there was talk that the course would likely be evacuated in an hour’s time. I heard the first faint rumble of thunder at the 6th tee, so when I got to the parking lot near the midpoint of the 6th hole, I called it a day. Play was apparently suspended not much later.

* A related issue that came out after the suspension was: Could something have been done to get everyone in before the weather got bad? Could the tee times have started earlier (8:24 was the earliest of the day)? Perhaps, though I don’t think there would have been enough daylight to go with the 7:30 start that some suggested. One thing that could have been done: monitor and enforce pace of play. Today was just short of glacial. This wasn’t due to “my” group at all; in fact, they were all pretty vocal about their frustration with the slow play in front. We were literally waiting on almost every shot for the group ahead of us to play. I suspect by that point it was an accumulated delay of the 11 groups in front of us, but where’s John Paramore when you really need him?

* A somewhat amusing incident from #14: As Willis was walking off the green, he asked the scorekeeper to talk to a rules official and get him some Advil. Goydos, right behind him, said that he thought he had something like that in his bag. As he was removing the bottle from the pocket of his golf bag, Willis asked, “What’s the expiration date on that??” It turns out that the label design was so outdated that he was sure it was expired; sure enough, it was, by at least a year. Time to clean out the golf bag?

* The first group I followed was silent. The second group almost never stopped talking. I prefer the latter; much more entertaining as a spectator. What do they talk about out there? Anything and everything. The NCAA basketball tournament was a popular topic this weekend, not surprisingly.

Unfortunately, that “real job” thing will keep me from being on-course for the finish on Monday, so no “live” reporting on the end. I will say this: if Ernie Els does win, you might want to put down a wager (if you’re the wagering kind) on him at The Players in May. Why? For those superstitiously inclined: if Ernie does win at Bay Hill, he will have won at my two “live tournaments” so far in 2010; The Players will be the third of those. (Of course, a better reason would be: he’s playing really well.)