Round 1 of Hyundai Tournament of Champions Canceled, Everyone to Restart on Saturday

By Carl Conrad
Joshua S. Kelly-USA TODAY Sports

You know how everyone has been talking all week about the golf season starting today with the first round of the Hyundai Tournament of Champions? Well, yeah, we were just kidding about that. The conditions were less than desirable, to say the least, during the first round. Play was suspended twice, and then officials canceled the round completely.

Basically what that means is that tournament officials gave a big “sike” to the players that had posted scores or were already on the course. Everyone gets to restart on Saturday. There were ten players that had yet to post a score, and defending champion Steve Stricker hadn’t even teed off yet.

Slugger White, the vice president of rules and operations for the tour summed up the conditions rather succinctly, when he said “It started off bad and got worse. It was pretty nasty out there.”  I guess you can safely call rain and wind gusts of up to 42 miles an hour nasty.

The field will try to play two complete rounds tomorrow, with the first tee time at 7:30 Hawaiian time (12:30 pm eastern time). Considering that everyone has to play 18 holes just to complete the first round, it’s going to be a long day for everyone. Thankfully, the tournament only consists of 30 players, so it should be feasible as long as the weather cooperates.

For those of you that think that completely wiping out results from a round is unprecedented, White says that while it does not happen very often, he can recall at least three times he has witnessed such a ruling.

So, with the swipe of a pen, any and all results from Kapalua today have been erased, as if the players never even stepped on the course. At least it’s an interesting start to the 2013 season.

You can view all of Carl’s RantSports articles here and follow him on Twitter @CarlConrad81.

 

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