US PGA should not be allowed wriggle off the hook

WRIGGLE like a snake, waddle like a duck went the punch line of Brendan Bowyer’s 1960s hit The Hucklebuck.

The words came to mind again on Sunday night as two hapless members of the US PGA attempted to explain how they had allowed their championship go into a fifth day.

Incredibly, Andy Bush, the tournament director, and Kerry Haigh, managing director of tournaments for the US PGA, were forced to admit that they never even discussed the option of starting the final round an hour earlier so as to avoid the “severe thunderstorms” forecast for 6pm.

They came in more or less on schedule with 12 players still on the course and left the organisers with no option other than to bring everybody back yesterday.

The PGA have rightly come in for considerable criticism but we should not be surprised. The three American major championships, the Masters, US Open and PGA, are timed to finish at 7pm. That’s fair enough where the Open is concerned for that event has an 18 hole play-off on the following day. However, the Masters is decided by sudden death play-off and the PGA over three holes and hole by hole after that.

I remember Nick Faldo win a Masters green jacket in near total darkness after weather had delayed play mid-round on the final Sunday, while the PGA has been flirting with this thing for years until it finally caught up with them.

Few had any sympathy for them. So how did they allow it to happen?

Does CBS or the PGA run the championship? “For almost a year, we had agreed on a 7pm finish and published that on all our schedules,” said Haigh. “The forecast all week had been for scattered showers and a chance of storms and lightning. We’ve been very fortunate up until now with storms that could basically have come at any time during the afternoon. We talked with CBS and I guess mutually agreed on what is an appropriate finish time.”

Not even the intervention of Phil Mickelson could make these people see reason. He revealed that: “I had certainly asked to go maybe an hour earlier to try to get it in. Last [Saturday] night was a bit of a struggle and when we had a delay before we teed off Sunday, I knew there was no chance of finishing.”

Haigh insisted he wasn’t aware of Mickelson’s request to have the tee times moved up but had to concede that, in spite of the forecast, they didn’t discuss a change with CBS.

“If we hadn’t had the first suspension, we expected to finish at 6.50 which gave us an hour and ten minutes. The three holes in the play-off are probably 40 to 45 minutes at the maximum which probably gave us two or even three additional holes.”

Maybe so, maybe not, but did the PGA consider the feelings of the public who many felt, in the American jargon, had been “stiffed up” by not being able to watch what was developing into a gripping finale to the tournament and, of course, the presentation of the trophy?

“We’re obviously disappointed for the spectators who were unable to come back on Monday but we all wanted to see a finish on schedule so it’s very disappointing,” Haigh struggled on. “We were within seven or eight miles of the storm missing us so I guess we were very unlucky that it did hit us.”

Haigh admitted that the expense of the extra day to his organisation was “significant.” Pressed on whether it made sense to set a finishing time of 7pm 12 months previously and to then stick to it rigidly, Haigh was back in “if” country once again and just couldn’t wriggle off the hook.

It is understandable that tournament organisers must keep the television moguls happy because of the massive sums of money involved.

Indeed, this applies equally at the British Open where the BBC ensure that play on the Sunday night also goes on past 6pm.

The earnest hope now is that they will all take note of Sunday’s fiasco and act accordingly, although the Masters did move their tee times up a couple of years ago - and the anticipated storms never struck.

Whereas Ireland’s Paul McGinley concluded his business before the first of the two storms struck and was free to enjoy a relaxing evening with his wife in Manhattan, his European colleagues Lee Westwood and Greg Owen were playing the 18th when the klaxon sounded.

“Had they run, they would have made it,” lamented Westwood’s manager Chubby Chandler. The pair also had plans for that evening and weren’t best pleased, especially as Lee had gone from three under to three over and out of contention while Owen had dropped ten shots which was hardly the best of news for his Irish caddie JP Fitzgerald.

McGinley conducted a company day in New York yesterday for Investec, many of whose representatives supported him at Baltusrol on Sunday when he shot a very commendable 69 to finish three over for the championship.

Even so, he was desperately disappointed at how few birdie putts he was able to hole during the four days and can now only hope for better things this week when teeing it up in the WGC NEC at Akron, Ohio.

He is joined there by Pádraig Harrington, Darren Clarke and Graeme McDowell, all of whom missed the cut at Baltusrol.