US PGA Players Championship halted by downpours

Thunderstorms and showers halted the second round of the US PGA Players Championship here on Friday with golfers taking the course for only 44 minutes. American Steve Jones owned a one-stroke lead at the eight million-dollar showcase event after an opening-round eight-under par 64, one off the course record for the suddenly soaked TPC at Sawgrass. "It's just too saturated out there," tournament director Mark Russell said. "We can't play golf under the rules."
Play was scheduled to resume Saturday morning with hopes of completing the second round and making the cut before predicted afternoon showers drenched the course once more.
"We haven't got a very good forecast," Russell said. "Who knows what we could do. If we could get that done, maybe we will play 36 holes on Sunday."
Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh, the two top-ranked players in the world, were among several who complained about mud on the ball in Thursday's first round. With soggy conditions expected to dominate the rest of the way, officials had to consider using "lift, clean and place" rules, although the round began without such measures and Russell intends to keep things that way.
"Right now we're scheduled to play ball down," he said. "That's what we hope to do." But Russell would not discard the possibility of wiping out the few scores posted on Friday and restarting the second round Saturday under "lift, clean and place" conditions because of the conditions.
"Right now we're scheduled to resume round two," Russell said. "But all options are open. Let's hope the weather co-operates." No one completed more than three holes and none of the leaders had teed off. This became the seventh US PGA event of 2005 to suffer a weather delay.
The first day last week at Bay Hill saw only two hours of play. "The last two weeks have been weird," South African Ernie Els said.
Fred Funk said with mud clinging to the ball even before the latest soaking, luck will play a greater factor than skill.
"When the fairways are in a condition where the mud sticks, it becomes a luck issue," he said. "You lose total control of where the ball is going. Now you're depending on luck and not the skill level of the player and that's not fair. "Ernie (Els) had 180 yards to the front of the green on 16 yesterday and chose to lay up because he had so much mud on his ball."