The PGA TOUR brethren tee off Thursday at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut. As usual, the TOUR establishes its 'early-late' tee times for Thursday and its opposite for Friday. All's fair, right? Well, most of the time!
For the counterpoint, we won't soon forget the first 36 holes of the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black and the 'early' Thursday and 'late' Friday rain deluges. Line-after-line of storm cells caused an abrupt end to all play at 10:16 a.m. Thursday. The 'early' times were hammered
, and the 'late' times never made it out of the box
. For the 'lates', this made for a rain-free Friday afternoon
start and an early rain-free, 36-hole Saturday morning
finish . The 'early'
Thursday times didn't begin their
second round until
Saturday afternoon. By which time, the rains had started again.
Read that again -- slowly -- and realize that the Thursday 'late' crowd enjoyed the "luck of the draw" and a rain-free, Monday finish golf tournament.
A-n-y-way . . .
Early-rising Traveler's fans will find
Sergio Garcia, Brian Gay and
Anthony Kim teeing off #1 at 7:42 a.m. In broadcast-speak, it's an "attractive group", but yawn --
-- don't expect a thundering herd of gallery-ites.
On Friday, you can sleep in: The same group goes off 'late' at 12:52 p.m., only now with hundreds, even thousands, of their fans in tow.
The
au courant can arrive late Thursday:
Lucas Glover, 2009 U.S. Open Champion, tees off #1 at 1:03 p.m., a time somewhere between fan visits to the hot dog stand and the arrival of the litter brigade. The bright-eyed can catch him Friday off #10 at 7:53 a.m.
The PGA TOUR.
Rain or shine . . . Gotta love it!
http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/r034/tee-times.html