The Players Championship: Tommy Fleetwood, Tom Hoge share early lead at storm-delayed tournament
- Rain and thunderstorms wreaked havoc at the PGA Tour’s Players Championship in Florida, with a long delay that kept some players from even teeing off before darkness halted the opening round
- Tommy Fleetwood returned from a long delay to make a 10-foot birdie putt on the par-5 second hole for his third birdie in a row
The PGA Tour’s premier event with a $20 million purse got off to a stop-and-go start because of storms Thursday and a dire forecast for Friday. Only 66 players finished the opening round. Twelve didn’t even hit their first tee shots.
The PGA Tour enjoyed ideal weather with no delays for nine weeks in four states across five time zones to start the year. And for the richest event in golf, with the strongest and deepest field of the year, it barely got started.
More than an inch of overnight rain delayed the start by an hour. Storms in the area resulted in another delay of more than four hours. Jon Rahm finally got his short game and putting to behave, and it carried him to a 69. Particularly pleasing was his birdie-par-birdie finish. Someone asked if he could take that momentum into tomorrow.
“First of all, I don’t even know if I’m going to play tomorrow,” Rahm said.
Tommy Fleetwood, a Ryder Cup star in Paris in 2018 whose last victory was in South Africa toward the end of 2019, returned from the long delay to make a 10-foot birdie putt on the par-5 second hole for his third birdie in a row.