AT&T Pebble Beach final round pushed to Monday, 54-hole event still possible

Andrew Putnam found a break in the rain at Pebble Beach Sunday morning.

The 13th-year pro took out his phone to record a video of the current conditions of the host course of this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

He posted it with the caption: “Update – still a beautiful day for golf. Let’s get a few holes in before the heavy stuff comes. @attproam @PGATOUR.”

The caption is important because you can only hear a few words Putnam says in the video.

“Guys, it’s really not that bad out here. The sun is shining,” he says before the winds get stronger and down out his voice. He then turned the camera to show Pebble’s 18 fairway as the sun pokes out from behind ominous-looking dark storm clouds.

Ben Griffin also documented his adventure outside as he got a look at the conditions.

Putnam, Griffin and the rest of this week’s field in the $20 million Signature Event are not playing golf Sunday as the final round was delayed and eventually postponed to Monday by the PGA Tour around 9:30 a.m. local time.

An atmospheric river storm system arrived Saturday night battering California’s central coast with rain and gale force winds. For the rest of the day Sunday, the National Weather Service is forecasting wind gusts of up 75 mph while the area remains in a high wind warning until 10 p.m.

Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis reported Sunday afternoon the course has already suffered damage including collapsed camera towers and tents, as well as downed trees.

As the players’ videos showed, much of the rain from the system had already dissipated, but the course was already saturated. Saturday night, PGA Tour Director of TV Rules Mark Dusbabek said at the end of the third-round CBS broadcast that the Tour’s meteorologist was anticipating as much as four inches of rain overnight and through the day Sunday.

“Our regulations say we need to make every effort to play 72 holes, which includes playing on Monday,” PGA Tour Chief Referee Gary Young said in a Saturday evening press conference. “We’re already dealing with a very soggy golf course and at that point, we’re making the decision whether or not we think that the standards for professional golf are there.

The forecast for Monday is significantly better than Sunday with winds dying down to a much more tame 10 to 15 mph with 23 mph gusts. Rain is still in the forecast with a 70 percent chance throughout the day, but the expected accumulation is just .1 to .25 inches.

Young said the fact the tournament is one of the Tour’s eight Signature Events has no bearing on the goal to play 72 holes, but they will need the time to clean up and prepare the course after the storm.

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“I think it’s very, very important to say that we want to make sure that the golf course is of the quality on Monday that we would not want golf balls disappearing into the fairways and losing golf balls,” he said. “We feel very confident that the volunteers who have done an outstanding job up to this point helping us locate balls in the landing zones, that the tournament feels that numbers are going to be sufficient on Monday with volunteers that they could help us through that period.”

Tee times are set to begin at 8 a.m. PT Monday with the final threesome of Wyndham Clark, Ludvig Aberg and Matthieu Pavon going off at 10:25 a.m. That gives the Tour about two to two hours and 15 minutes of wiggle room in case of another delay as Young says the first group must start the final round by 10:15 a.m. to get the entire round in.

PGA Tour rules state that the final round can only be extended into Tuesday if half the players finish the final round on Monday. However, Young said that is only in the case of an unforeseen delay Monday.

“Our regulation states that we can’t start play on Monday without knowing that we could finish play on Monday,” Young explained. “If we did that and then for some reason weather rolled in on us that caused us to delay again if more than half the field has finished play, then we would extend play into Tuesday. But we would need more than half of them to have completed their round on Monday.”

If half the field does not complete the final round Monday, then the round would be wiped out and Clark would be crowned the champion of a 54-hole event.