Tommy Fleetwood doesn't need his mac before weather halts progress at the Players

Rory McIlroy made a bogey and birdie in the only two holes he completed Thursday before play was suspended due to darkness. Séamus Power only finished one hole, making par on the 10th. Both will face a long day in what is forecast to be gruesome weather on Friday, with the first round scheduled to resume at 7:15am (12.15pm Irish

Fri, 11 Mar, 2022 - 08:06

Scott Michaux, Ponte Vedra Beach

The most noticeable thing Tommy Fleetwood has done all year is shave his beard. Suddenly after getting into the Players Championship by a whisker, he’s poised to turn around a two-and-half-year drought after an opening 66 at TPC Sawgrass.

“I'm chuffed to be in on that score,” said the 31-year-old Englishman, who shares the lead with American Tom Hoge just a shot ahead of Kramer Hickok, Joaquin Niemann, Keith Mitchell and Anirban Lahiri in the abbreviated first round. “I felt like I drove the ball well aside from a couple, and I felt like I chipped and putted great. For sure, like that was the most I could have got out of the round. So days like that are very, very pleasing.

“I think there are things that I can do better. So I'll try to do that over the next few days. Again, I'm not going to complain about the day or anything. I'll just move on and be happy with a 66.”

Fleetwood admits his confidence in his swing has taken a hit since he last lifted a trophy at the end of 2019 at the Nedbank in South Africa – a result that lifted him to a world ranking of No. 10. He had fallen to No. 50 by mere fractions after missing the cut two weeks ago at the Honda Classic, which was just enough to get him one of the last exemptions into the $20 million Players.

“Especially out here, the standard is so, so high and it keeps getting higher, when you're off the pace and you're lacking confidence, the game becomes very, very difficult,” Fleetwood said. “I haven't sort of played terrible. My results haven't been terrible, but I've lacked obviously very good results. And then I think especially from a world ranking standpoint … I've just sort of been gradually declining.”

Fleetwood’s frustration level hit a point three weeks ago that he took the shears to his beard.

“I was in a really bad mood. It was like break some golf clubs or shave my beard, then I went for the beard,” he said, only half joking.

On a soggy Sawgrass course in a first-round that lost a total of 5 hours, 14 minutes to weather delays, Fleetwood set the early bar. When this started slipping away from him with a couple errant drives on Nos. 6 and 7, he made a world-class par save on the latter and poured in a 24-footer for birdie on the eighth to finish strong before what likely will turn into a full Friday off for the morning starters.

“Absolutely, I completely stole a 4,” he said of the seventh. “Like, that could have been any number. But almost like the next hole, it flies in the middle of the green and make a birdie on one of the hardest holes on the course. So it was just one of those rounds where things went right for me.”

Not everyone could say the same. Harold Varner III was trading leads with Fleetwood and Will Zalatoris for much of the round, and seemed to be cruising after his sixth birdie in eight holes had him 7-under through 16. But on a soft island-green 17th that had yielded no balls to the water all day, Varner spun his back 30 feet and off the front of the green into the drink to make triple after nearly spinning it in the water again from a divot-free drop zone. He added another bogey at 18 to finish with a disappointing 3-under 69.

Shane Lowry was 2-under through his first seven holes before the round got away from him with five bogeys in a seven-hole stretch from Nos. 18 to 6. But he gathered himself with finishing birdies on the par-4 seventh and par-5 ninth to salvage a 1-over 73.

“Tomorrow looks like a rough day,” said PGA Tour on-site meteorologist Wade Stettner. “We could be battling thunderstorms throughout most of the day.” Players have resigned themselves to dealing with weather issues the rest of the week.

“The way the weather forecast was coming in here, you never really knew when you were going to play,” said Hoge, who shot 5-under 31 on the front side (his second nine) to claim a share of the lead. “With that said, you don't know if we're going to play a 72-hole tournament, 54-hole tournament, whatever it may be, so you just go out and try and play well with the opportunities that we're given, and if you get called in, so be it.” Overnight rains already dumped 1.25 inches of rain on the TPC Sawgrass course and prompted a one-hour delay to the start of the Players and preferred lies. Play was suspended by dangerous weather at 11am and officially resumed at 15:14.

Conditions are not expected to improve over the next two of days, bringing the distinct possibility of not being able to finish on schedule Sunday into the conversation. With an 80 percent chance of more storms on Friday increasing to 100 percent on Saturday, the challenge will only be enhanced with anticipated high winds as a cold front blows through.

“We need to play golf when we can play golf in order to accomplish the end goal which is, hopefully, finishing the championship by Sunday afternoon,” Gary Young, the PGA Tour’s chief referee, told the Golf Channel.

Sunday’s forecasted high is 54 degrees (12 Celsius), which would be the lowest temperature in the history of a Players Championship. Couple that with strong winds and the Stadium Course will be a wicked challenge.

The Players hasn’t had a Monday finish since 2005, when then 48-year-old Fred Funk beat Luke Donald, Tom Lehman and Scott Verplank by a stroke after finishing 32 holes on Monday in blustery conditions. Numerous weather delays prevented the second round from being concluded until Sunday and the third round Monday. Had Funk not made a 6-foot par putt at No. 18, there would have been a four-way playoff on Tuesday morning.

Prior to that, victories by Tiger Woods in 2001 and Hal Sutton in both 2000 and 1983 each concluded on Monday.