Now, it will end in August anyway, with play extending past the weekend, after rain washed away afternoon action at Baltusrol Golf Club.
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The year’s final major championship appeared to be heading for a Monday finish at best as Americans Jimmy Walker and Robert Streb, tied on nine-under-par 131, lead through 36 holes.
“We feel it’s important for all the players to play from the first tee and play the holes in order”, Haigh said.
With sunrise at 5:52 a.m., the first tee time on Saturday easily could’ve been 7 a.m., which would’ve given the opening groups plenty of time for preparations prior to the round. Hope is that Round 4 action can begin at 8:40 a.m. with the current top of the leaderboard attempting to go off at 3:25 p.m.
Take Kevin Kisner. He shot a 5-under 65 to complete his third round at 5-under par. He was one shot ahead of Padraig Harrington, who also had a 65. Only 37 of the 86 players who made the cut completed the third round, and 10 players had yet to tee off.
Knox couldn’t resist a playful dig on Twitter in which he told Leishman that he had “grub, showered and feet up now”. “Make that putt so we don’t play 4 straight days together”.
The last time the US PGA was held at Baltusrol in 2005, Phil Mickelson prevailed in a Monday finish brought about by poor weather.
Fans leave the course during a weather delay in the third round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., Saturday, July 30, 2016.
So far this year each major champion won one for the first time: Danny Willett in the Masters, Dustin Johnson in the U.S. Open and Stenson.
Kisner and Harrington showed a glimpse of what figured to be low scoring Saturday because of the soft conditions from two spells of rain earlier in the week. Why didn’t the PGA anticipate the forecast better, adjust its schedule and squeeze more third-round play into Saturday?
“Keep it in the fairway, you can attack”, Kisner said. “The course is receptive enough”. “There is a low-60s round [possible]”.
“I think that major record of 63 will be broken today or tomorrow”, Mickelson said. The greens are pristine. You can make a lot of putts. They are soft, so you can get the ball very close. “I think that there’s that 61 or 62 out there that I was probably trying to chase a little too hard”. But Phil Mickelson – who posted his own 63 at the Open Championship two weeks ago – expects that to change awfully soon. Mickelson’s 63 came in the first round, while Stenson used a 63 on Sunday to win his first major.
The Dubliner followed that with two more birdies on the 12th and 14th before finishing off with his fifth birdie of the day on the par-five 18th hole.
“Hit the right shots at the right time and any of the shots that I didn’t hit well didn’t do me any harm”, he said. “So it was one of those days”.
“I was pretty excited about it”, Streb said.
“I actually didn’t play that well to be honest and putted unbelievably well, which was so much fun”. It was fantastic, the best I played Thursday, is the worst score I shot.
The nature of the game Saturday was to wait.
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“When things aren’t going well, they get me back on track and give me that little extra energy boost”. However, the weather forecast for Sunday includes a chance for rain most of the day.
