Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
DORAL, Fla. (AP) — Brett Rumford's day at the Cadillac Championship started, of course, with a tee shot.
Then another.
And another.
And one more.
Three balls into the water later, the right rough probably never looked so good to Rumford, who made an 11 on the par-5 10th hole to start his round Thursday. By then, he was laying seven anyway, played his eighth down the right side of the fairway, hit his ninth to 15 feet and two-putted for the tidy and rarely seen sextuple-bogey.
His round improved a bit from there: Rumford was 8 over through 12 holes. When he returns to Trump National Doral on Friday morning — a rain storm stopped play for nearly 2½ hours, and darkness kept 62 of the 68 players in the field from finishing their opening rounds — a 12-foot birdie putt awaits him on the par-3 fourth.
___
SHANKING SWEDE: Henrik Stenson hit another errant shot at Doral. This time, he at least kept his pants on.
Stenson shanked his approach on the par-4 second hole Thursday way to the right, missing the green by a good 50 yards and having to eventually declare the ball lost.
He walked back to the fairway, replayed the approach, two-putted and made double-bogey.
In 2009 at Doral, the event then being the CA Championship, Stenson hit a wayward tee ball on the par-4 third hole and removed his shoes, socks, shirt and pants to play his second from the mud. Basically, he was down to boxers and his glove as he whacked the ball free with a wedge, but said he didn't want to play with dirt and grime all over his clothes — as he had done in a round earlier that year.
"I'll probably take that to my grave with me," Stenson said that day.
He could be right. Five years later, a few people in the gallery Thursday were murmuring about that very incident after he declared the lost ball and he retreated across the second fairway to resume play.
___
WEATHER ISSUES: Donald Trump boasted before the tournament that because of all the new sand under the surface at his Doral resort, drainage would take only about five minutes.
He wasn't that far off, honestly.
A quarter-inch of rain fell during a fast-moving storm that interrupted the opening round of the Cadillac Championship on Thursday, and within about an hour of the worst of the storm being over, players were back in position to resume play.
Workers removed some palm fronds that toppled to the turf during the storm, which was accompanied by a wind gust of 40 mph at the course itself and had 52 mph gusts at weather stations not far from Doral.
Forecasters said weather for Friday, Saturday and Sunday should be much better than Thursday, when parts of South Florida were under a tornado warning for several hours.
___
BRADLEY'S CARD: Keegan Bradley's day ended with an eventful run of four holes.
Bradley started on the back side, making the turn with an even-par 36, one birdie, one bogey. His second nine, that's when the fun truly began.
Bradley went birdie, birdie, double bogey, birdie in those, before darkness ended play. He was 1 under through 13 when the horns went off signaling that the opening day was complete.
___
DIVOTS: Graeme McDowell had a tricky little chip awaiting him when play resumed after the storm, having to get his ball just past the edge of a TV tower from behind the par-5 eighth green. He wound up saving par. ... Walking off the sixth hole, Zach Johnson fist-bumped a child who had his face painted like a tiger, clearly paying homage to Tiger Woods. "What's up big man?" Johnson asked the boy, who growled in response. So Johnson growled back, and the boy laughed. ... The last time a round was suspended because of weather at Doral was 2011. It's the third dangerous-weather suspension on the PGA Tour so far this season. ... Victor Dubuisson has taken special temporary membership on the PGA Tour. That allows the Frenchman unlimited sponsor exemptions the rest of the year.
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
