Storms fail to halt Masters

The Masters was able to resume on time today despite a tornado passing through the Augusta area during the night.

Over an inch of rain fell in less than two hours and more than 11,000 homes lost power for a while.

Fifty players were left in the tournament and they included, of course, Irish 19-year-old Rory McIlroy after he was cleared of any wrong-doing on the final hole of his second round.

McIlroy was called back to the club at around 8.40pm – nearly 4½ hours after he had finished – to study television coverage of him in the bunker.

It was a question of whether he had kicked the sand after leaving his ball in the bunker en route to a triple-bogey seven, but it was ruled that he was just smoothing things over and no penalty was imposed.

Having four-putted the short 16th, however, the teenager had fallen from sixth place to 42nd and had survived the cut with nothing to spare at one-over, 10 adrift of overnight leaders Chad Campbell and Kenny Perry.