There will be no golf at Pebble Beach this Sunday. Wind and rain have prevented it. The worst forecasts were fulfilled and the fourth day of the AT&T Pro Am has been postponed to Monday. The plan is to start the game from eight in the morning local time, five in the afternoon in mainland Spain. We will see if the fallen water, the great concern at this moment, allows it.
In principle, the weather report indicates that the rain will be dissipating throughout the day, although we will have to see to what extent. The great concern of the referees is that the course is so wet that it is unplayable, with embedded balls that could even be lost in the street.
“Our rules say that we have to do everything possible to play 72 holes, which includes playing on Monday,” said the chief referee of the PGA Tour, Gary Young, after Saturday’s round.
As it stands, Wyndham Clark, who signed a historic 60 on Saturday at Pebble Beach, a course record, will sleep with a one-stroke lead over Ludvig Aberg for the second night. The starts are scheduled between 8:00 and 10:25 a.m. (17:00 and 19:25 in Spain).
The possibility of the tournament being shortened to 54 holes and Clark being declared the winner of this designated $20 million tournament is not ruled out. “We wouldn’t start playing on Monday if we knew we couldn’t finish the round on Monday,” Young said. “Therefore, the deadline would mean that we would have to start playing on Monday at 10:15 a.m. at the latest to complete the game.”
“We just want to make sure that on Monday the golf course is in a condition to hold a good quality championship, that the conditions are professional level,” Young said. “We want to make sure that on Monday the golf course is of such a quality that we don’t want the golf balls to disappear in the streets.”
Checking in with @AndrewPutnam1 from Pebble Beach 😳pic.twitter.com/aXC7eWfyKQ
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 4, 2024
There is also the possibility that the game will be extended until Tuesday. “Our rules state that we cannot start playing on Monday without knowing that we could finish the game on Monday. If we did and then, for some reason, the weather forced us to delay it again, if more than half of the field has finished the game, then we would extend the game to Tuesday,” he explained. “But we would need more than half to have completed their round on Monday.”
It will be the third Monday finish of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in the last six years. The last time it was reduced to 54 holes was in 2009. Fifty-nine of the 80 players playing this week are also scheduled to play next week at the WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale, which begins on Thursday.
