Due to the severe winds which swept across the Pine Valley Golf Resort & Country Club in Beijing, Thursday's play in the first round of the Johnnie Walker Classic was abandoned for the day at 3.15pm. The first round resumed at 6.30am on Friday morning.
Tournament Director Mike Stewart outlined Thursday's problems. “It has been a tough day for everyone concerned and it is a great shame that we have reached this situation where we have got fantastic, beautiful sunny weather outside but it is just too strong wind-wise to keep playing golf,” he said.
“What effectively happened this morning was the fact that we did have a fairly strong wind to start with but as the morning progressed the wind increased in intensity at about 9.45am and from that point we had a number of balls move on different greens, the sixth green, the 14th, green and the first green over a 20 minute period and at 10.14am precisely we suspended play and got everybody off the golf course.
“For the next few hours we monitored the wind at a couple of different points on the golf course and whilst we had lulls in the wind where it did drop to comfortable and playable levels, it never dropped for a sufficient period of time for us to consider us getting the players back out for us to continue play.
“We had gusts up to 59kph and we were getting strong gusts, averaging over 40kph, every 15 -20 minutes. We were also testing the balls on the greens and the balls were moving. Whilst they might remain there for 15-20 minutes, they would then move as soon as we got a further strong gust of wind.”
Play will restart at 6.30am with the afternoon segment from Thursday starting at 8.00am. That segment of players will then turn around and go out first for the second round.
“We have just got to keep playing golf whenever we can so we will keep going until we complete the second round which will now be into Saturday,” continued Stewart.
“It is likely that we will be redrawing for the third round in three balls off two tees to help us catch up and it looks like, based on our current situation, that we wouldn’t finish that third round until sometime on Sunday morning.
“Therefore we would be look to finish the third round on Sunday morning and then looking at redrawing again, getting them back out as soon as we can on Sunday, with hopefully a conclusion sometime on Sunday afternoon.
“It could be an option to reduce to 54 holes if we got further disruption. We would also look to go into Monday if we needed to finish either the third or fourth round on that day. It is very unusual and highly unlikely that we would want to schedule the last round for Monday but we would certainly consider Monday as a playing day in order to complete the final round.”
When play stopped, Australia’s Adam Scott led the tournament on three under par after ten holes, one shot clear of three players, Korea’s KJ Choi, José Manuel Lara of Spain and Jean-Francois Lucquin of France.
