Old Course Play Suspended Due To Wind...
/And greens too fast for their contours. Again. This happened at the 2010 Open Championship and now at the 2013 Ricoh Women's British Open.
The irony? Greens are sped up to offset modern driving distances and to prevent low scoring, yet whenever we've seen modern elite players on slow greens they don't make many putts.
The official announcement:
Third round play was suspended at 12.33pm on Saturday due to high winds gusting at 38 miles per hour.
Balls were moving on the greens, with the 10th green particularly affected.
Play has been suspended until at least 4.30pm and tournament officials will make a further announcement at 4pm local time.
**Martin Dempster's account of the strange day at St. Andrews.
In case you were wondering about how the greens were prepared with the strong wind forecast, Alistair Tait has your answer.
The LGU had already prepared for the strong winds by not cutting the greens as close as the previous day. “The 11th green wasn’t cut,” she said. “The greens were 9.4 on the stimpmeter as opposed to 10 the day before. They were really quite sticky.”
The weather forecast for tomorrow calls for strong winds again, although not quite as strong as today. If the wind gets up and play is affected, then a Monday finish is an option.
Only nine players finished their third rounds. Those nine players were 56 over par. Rikako Morita was the worst of that bunch with a score of 86, 14 over. Cristie Kerr and amateur Lydia Ko had matching 3-over 75s.
