COURSE REVIEWS

First Round at Pebble Beach:
Weather Interrupts Play (Again)

By David R. Holland,
Senior Regional Staff Writer

PEBBLE BEACH, CA -- Enough already.

The rain and wind came again at Puddle Beach on Thursday, halting play and causing the PGA Tour to start scrambling for an alternate plan. They ought to be getting good at this. It’s the fourth time in five years that the tournament could be shortened or called off because of the rain.

The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am plan this time is to resume and hopefully finish first-round play on Friday at 10 a.m. Then play the second round on Saturday, third on Sunday and fourth on Monday.

	David Duval

When play was halted on Thursday it was David Duval leading at 4-under-par after 10 holes at Poppy Hills and Vijay Singh was at 3-under through five holes. Tiger Woods finished 10 holes at even par.

“Who knows, maybe this year we will finish this tournament the day after the U.S. Open concludes in June,” said tour veteran and NBC announcer Roger Maltbie. “It was getting pretty silly out there today.

“I started at 8:40 today at Pebble and by the time my group got to the fourth green funny things were starting to happen to balls at rest on the green. It was really blowing hard out there -- I’d guess gusts up to 50 mph and a ball can be blown out of a resting place and go 40 feet. The rules of the game says that you have to play it where it ends up --that’s just the spirit of the game,” Maltbie said.

By the time Maltbie reached the 107-yard par 3 he pulled out a six iron and Jerry Pate hit a five iron into the howling gusts.

• Preview: AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am • Wednesday's Pebble Beach Coverage • Past PGA Tour tournament coverage

“I know everyone gets sick of this. The players can’t play, the writers can’t do their job and the TV guys don’t have anything to do,” Maltbie said. “I used to come to this tournament when I was a kid and I remember weather like this. When I started on the tour in 1975 the weather wasn’t that bad, but about five years ago things started to change and it has been rough. When the wind is gusting at 50 on Pebble Beach it just isn’t a fair test of golf.”

So the same discussion will happen throughout the world of golf today. Why doesn’t the PGA Tour just move the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am to a date that isn’t in California’s rainy season?

Ask one guy and he’ll tell you the merchants depend on this week because it is a slack tourist time in Monterey. Who cares if the Sardine Factory sells a few less over-priced meals or the Hyatt Regency has a few vacancies?

Ask another guy and he will tell you it is the PGA Tour. There just isn’t an open date to put this tournament when it isn’t raining on the Central Coast.

“I know what I’d do,” Maltbie continued. “I’d start the PGA Tour in January in Florida and come to the west in March or April. It is tough enough out here with just the wind blowing hard at Pebble Beach. I just hope I don’t laugh out loud on the air in June with the greens hard and fast when a gust of wind blows a ball clear off the green.”

Lee Janzen sounded almost disgusted.

	Lee Janzen

"It's tough to look at it as a legitimate golf tournament when the conditions are like this," said Lee Janzen, who had stopped coming to Pebble after the 1996 rainfest. "This really doesn't do anything to convince me to come back. You just can’t get any rounds in. This solidifies why I haven't come back. It doesn’t seem legitimate either when you are playing the ball up."

Most likely the only reason the former U.S. Open champ Janzen came this year was to get some play on the course before the Open in June.

Play was officially suspended at 11:27 a.m. The wind wasn’t as bad at Spyglass Hill and Poppy Hills, but at Pebble Beach Golf Links, the wind blew hard enough to move the ball on the green as Maltbie attested to.

Last year the final round was washed out and in 1998 the leaders returned in August to finish 54 holes.