The weather won out at The Barclays.
PGA Tour officials made the decision to play the final round of the tournament, being held at Plainfield Country Club in Edison, N.J. this weekend, on Saturday. This means the event will be trimmed to 54 holes over three days rather than the customary 72 over four. The move made perfect sense as Hurricane Irene is expected to move into the Tri-state area Saturday afternoon and not pass through until Sunday evening. In most cases, the Tour would delay until Monday; however, the course is expected to be underwater by then.
“There’s one thing you can’t control in golf and that’s mother nature,” Sergio Garcia said. “I think at the end of the day the most important thing is that everybody’s safe. We would love to play 72, but unfortunately we can’t do it.”
Vijay Singh, a Barclays champion in 2006 and 2008, said everyone’s approach is now fast-tracked a day ahead.
“We take it as a Sunday now,” he said. “It’s the last day so we have to.”
Singh found himself among the leaders after Day Two. Defending champion Matt Kuchar (-14) was at the top of the board with a one shot lead over Dustin Johnson (-13) and Singh (-13). Garcia was 12 back with a score of -8.
“Obviously a couple bad bogeys today, but other than that it was pretty good,” Garcia said. “I think we played pretty solid. We hit a good amount of good shots. We holed some nice putts. We had a really good start. Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep it going. Then we had a fairly decent finish the last five or six holes.”
Plainfield Country Club was playing to low scores all around. The cut line was -4, which meant goodbye to Davis Love III, Geoff Ogilvy, Stewart Cink, Bubba Watson and Zach Johnson, among others. This was the first PGA Tour event hosted at this course, which has been home to a U.S. Amateur and the 1987 U.S. Women’s Open.
The Barclays is the first PGA playoff event in the FedEx Cup. It is being hosted in New Jersey for the fourth straight year, having been at Ridgewood Country Club, Liberty National Golf Club and Ridgewood since 2008. The event was held at Westchester Country Club in Harrison, N.Y. in 2007. The Barclays will head back to the Empire State next year to Bethpage Black in Long Island before returning to Liberty National in 2013.
PGA Tour officials say fans who purchased tickets to Sunday’s final round — and there were a lot of them since it was a sellout, even without Tiger Woods playing — can exchange their tickets for similar ones next year. While that’s a proper gesture, it doesn’t make much sense considering Bethpage Black is 66.4 miles and 1 hour and 24 minutes away (that’s with no traffic) from Edison. That’s not even mentioning the near $30-plus in tolls and gas to get there. The right thing to do would be to offer refunds or tickets to the 2012 and 2013 Barclays.
For Saturday, however, those on the course just hope to get through 18 before the hurricane comes in so they can get out of the area. Many had already booked flights or made plans to drive north to escape the possible foot of rain and 60-plus mph winds. But until that final putt, it’s business as usual.
“At the end of the day, you’re still trying to do the same thing,” Garcia said. “You’re still trying to hit good shots, still trying to make birdies and as few bogeys as possible.”
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