Rain Suspends Buick Invitational
The Spanish explorer Balboa clearly wasn't thinking about the PGA Tour's West Coast swing when he named the body of water off California the Pacific Ocean.
There has been nothing pacific, calm or tranquil about the last two weeks on tour. The West Coast Swing is now the Wet Coast Swing.
Just days after the Pebble Beach tournament was blown from February into August by El Nino, the second round of the Buick Invitational was washed out Friday when the greens at Torrey Pines became too wet to play.
Tom Kite, helped greatly in cold, windy rain by eye surgery that allows him to now play without glasses, was 9 under par through 29 holes, tied for the lead with Davis Love III, who had played 27 holes before play was suspended shortly after noon.
Steve Pate, Robert Damron and Jeff Sanday -- playing in his first PGA Tour event -- were at 8 under. Pate and Damron had played 28 holes and Sanday had completed 26.
Seven players, including Payne Stewart and Stewart Cink, were at 7 under. Tiger Woods, who started the day nine strokes back, got to 4 under through 30 holes to pull within five of the leaders.
Fuzzy Zoeller, who started the day one stroke off the lead at 9 under, was 4 over par for the 12 holes he played in Friday's mess and was 5 under through 30 holes.
The second round will be resumed at 9 a.m. PST Saturday, then the cut will be made and the third round played. But what's not clear is if the storm will set up camp and stay around for a few days like it did at Pebble Beach.
Kite was perhaps the only player to find a silver lining in the rain clouds.
"I've got a whole different perspective on playing in the rain now," Kite said about the surgery that corrected his eyesight. "These days used to wipe me out."
Kite had the operation two weeks ago "and when I woke up I had better than 20-20 eyesight," he said.
What the eyesight revealed to Kite on Friday were mountains of rain clouds that blew in off the Pacific Ocean, and slammed away at the shore below the cliffs at Torrey Pines.
The start of the second round was moved ahead by two hours to try and get in as many holes as possible before the storm hit.
Even though only two threesomes completed 36 holes, enough play was completed to make it possible to finish the second round and play the third round Saturday.
Last week, only 36 holes were completed over five days at Pebble Beach. The tournament was shortened to 54 holes and was to be completed March 2 before being pushed back to Aug. 17, the Monday after the PGA Championship near Seattle, because more El Nino storms are expected this month.
"I think everyone is on edge after last week," Kite said. ``There are just no other spots on the calendar to move events if they can't be completed as scheduled."
The season-opening Mercedes Championships was shortened to 54 holes last year because of rain and Pebble Beach has not been completed two of the past three years.
It was Vasco Nunede Balboa, the Spanish explorer who lived from 1475 to 1519, who gave the Pacific Ocean its name at around the same time some Scottish shepherds were hitting a ball around an area of windswept seaside land that would become St. Andrews.
Maybe Balboa should have headed north instead of west. At least in Scotland the sandy soil sucks up the rain and greens don't become vast undulating
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