The grounds crew at Kingsmill Resort worked tirelessly overnight to get the River Course ready for play. Shortly before dawn Saturday, they thought they had it.
Then, around 6:30 a.m., came another storm. An inch of rain fell in 30 minutes, and after tee times were pushed back three times, LPGA officials made the inevitable announcement: Saturday was a complete washout, and the Kingsmill Championship will be abbreviated to 54 holes.
“It is disappointing,” said Wayne Nooe, Kingsmill’s vice president of golf and sports. “The tournament staff put a lot of work into presenting a nice product for the players. And the agronomy team, I have to give them some props for what they’ve done over the last couple of days.
“With the weather they’ve dealt with, they had a golf course that was just about ready to play until we had the rain this morning. It really just got the golf course to the point where it was very difficult to get it back.”
The schedule now calls for the 60 players who did not complete their second rounds Friday to begin play Sunday at 7:30 a.m. The cut will be made after the second round finishes, and the final round is to start at 10:30 a.m. with groups of three teeing off Nos. 1 and 10.
Kingsmill becomes the third of 12 LPGA events this year to be shortened. The Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic, the first tournament of 2018, was cut to 54 holes because of wind. And two weeks ago, the Volunteers of America LPGA Texas Classic was abbreviated to 36 holes due to rain and wind.
None of the previous 13 LPGA events at Kingsmill had been shortened.
It wasn’t for a lack of effort. Michael Pierce, director of agronomy at Kingsmill, and a crew of about 60 have worked around the clock. Nooe and Kingsmill CEO John Hilker even had their squeegees out.
“There’s a number that have been coming in at 2 and 3 in the morning getting everything set up,” Nooe said. “They put a lot of hours in this week trying to get this golf course ready, but Mother Nature just hasn’t cooperated — this morning, in particular, with the heavy rain that came through.
“They’ve done a fantastic job. And tomorrow, when the golfers show up, we’ll have the golf course ready for them.”
With rain in the forecast since Wednesday, Thursday’s first round surprisingly went off without a hitch. Eighty-four players completed their second round Friday, but 60 were still on the course when play was suspended at 7:25 p.m.
In Gee Chun (65-66) is the current leader at 11-under-par 131. Austin Ernst and Nasa Hataoka are a shot back at 10 under. Ariya Jutanugarn, Kingsmill’s 2016 champion, and Angel Yin are tied for fourth at 9 under.
Golfers hate anything that interrupts their routine, but suboptimal weather is something they’ve become used to handling.
“You just kind of deal with it,” Ernst said after her Friday round. “I’ve normally got a pretty good attitude. I was shocked we never got called off the course (Thursday).”
Even though the weather makes visiting Busch Gardens problematic, Tour veteran Karrie Webb knows plenty of options.
“Lots of good restaurants,” she said Friday when asked about the area. “I haven’t done it for years, but I used to fish the lakes on the golf course in the evenings. The weather has been so iffy the last few years, it hasn’t really given us a chance to do that.”
