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OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE PRO-AMApril 18, 2010Gene SmithLUTZ, FLORIDA PHIL STAMBAUGH: We have Gene Smith, our assistant tournament director on the Champions Tour and he's going to give you an assessment of the golf course and why we had to wash the final round out. GENE SMITH: Unfortunately we have had over three quarters of an inch of rain just this morning. I know we had four inches Sunday before our advance week, which would take us to two weeks ago today, we had four inches of rain on the golf course. And that pretty much saturated the whole area, and because now we have had, I would say, generally, if we had not had the four inches two weeks ago, we probably could have continued to play with only three quarters of an inch today, but because the ground is saturated, there just isn't anywhere for that water to go. It's standing there. Best case scenario would have been maybe it would have drained enough to play in two hours once it stopped raining. It continues to rain right now as we speak. That would put us at 3 o'clock, at least. We didn't have enough daylight to get the round in, and our regulations do not allow us to continue play on Sunday if we don't think we can finish, and half of the field has not completed play. And of course we had nobody complete play today, so we were not even close to that scenario. Q. Are fans' tickets under your auspices? GENE SMITH: It's not. That would come under the Outback folks. Q. Was there standing water throughout the course, in the bunkers and like that? GENE SMITH: Yes, yes. And unfortunately, what happens when we have this much rain in a short period of time, you get the standing water. We had instigated the lift, clean and place local rule before play started this morning, knowing that we were going to get some pretty good rain, and knowing that players are going to be getting mud on the ball. Or the golf course may get to a point where having to take relief from casual water and that extra club length could kind of help them get relief they are in the fairway. Unfortunately, we had so much standing water out there that even the lift, clean and place, within a club length, wasn't going to get them out of the casual water. Now, to find relief from the casual water, you may be going 30, 40 yards into the rough, up on a slope, to where you don't have actual casual water; now changes the entire shot value, and just the competition is being compromised by that point. Q. How often has something like this happened? GENE SMITH: This is my 17th year out here, and I'm going to say this happens once a year. PHIL STAMBAUGH: Once, twice at most. GENE SMITH: Once or twice a year this happens. We have gone some years where we haven't missed a round, but most years, we'll have one tournament that ends up being a 36-hole tournament. Obviously Mother Nature is the one thing we have no control over. The Outback people did a fantastic job as they always do at this tournament. We had beautiful crowds the last two days, I'm sure you all saw. And we had a great field and a beautiful leaderboard and everything was aligned to have a beautiful finish today, and here comes Mother Nature, unfortunately. And that's the one thing we can't do anything about. Q. If this had been a standard TOUR event where you had pairings of just pros and they were in threes, or even twosomes, could this have been finished with enough daylight if it was to stop raining about now? GENE SMITH: Not a chance. And again, with the regs to hold true, if we had 78 players instead of the 96 we had, it wouldn't have made any difference. We might have had 30 more minutes we could have played with, but that 30 more minutes wouldn't have made any difference with what we are faced with. And looking at the radar, if y'all have a chance to see the radar, it's been back-building all morning. It looked, you know, at ten o'clock, it looked like 11 o'clock it was going to clear; and at 11 it looked like it was going to be 12; and at 12 it looked like 1, and at 1 it looked like 2, and it just continued to back-build. And we also have a lot more way south of us that we don't know what's going to be happening at 5, 6 o'clock this afternoon. But it's not looking that good. End of FastScripts |
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