PGA Championship 2023: A frost delay appears extremely seemingly for Thursday’s first spherical | Golf Information and Tour Info
The National Weather Service’s Buffalo Freeze Warning for the upper regions of New York Thursday morning read as follows:
IMPLICATIONS… Freezing and freezing conditions will kill crops and other vulnerable vegetation and potentially damage unprotected outside lines.”
It’s also not great for major championship golf tournaments. The first golf balls are scheduled to be in the air at 7 a.m. ET Thursday at the 105th PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club outside of Rochester, but the NWS forecast is for the temperature to be 37 degrees by then. Brrrrr.
Given that the low of 35 is only reached an hour before the first tee times, it is very likely that there will be frost on the ground and the start of the tournament will be delayed. Ice-covered grass doesn’t take foot traffic well, and managers will tell you there’s really no way to speed up the process. Luckily there is expected to be plenty of sunshine to help with that.
How long the potential delay lasts will determine what the knock-on effect looks like for the rest of the week, although it appears an hour or two could be made up without much trouble. But what looks like a weather roulette this week in Rochester is also expected to see a high chance of rain for the third round on Saturday. And the maximum temperatures forecast for each day: 68 on Thursday, 78 on Friday, 63 on Saturday and 73 on Sunday. Mother Nature can’t make up her mind.
Beanies and insulated vests have been trending during practice rounds this week, and Golf Digest social media expert Jamie Kennedy put together this clever compilation of the “Beanie Bunch”:
That, of course, is exactly what we can expect (and fear) from a PGA Championship to be held in the Northeast in May. “May is a transitional month between late spring and early summer,” National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Kelly in Buffalo told the Democrat & Chronicle of Rochester.
It could be worse. The newspaper noted that there was 10 inches of snow in Rochester around Mother’s Day 1989.
Of course, cold temperatures were never an issue when the PGA was held in August, instead muggy conditions prevailed at the venues in Kentucky, New Jersey and Missouri. But that all changed starting in 2019, when the PGA of America moved the event to May to better balance the schedule.
So far this has gone really well. Bethpage Black on New York’s Long Island hosted 2019. The week started with cold temperatures, but then warmed up. Harding Park, San Francisco was typically cool and humid in 2020 and Kiawah Island was windy in 2021. Last year May was a welcome date for Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where summer majors were some of the sweatiest ever.
At the PGA leadership press conference on Tuesday, the question of possible cold weather issues was raised.
Nodding to a sunny day during the practice round, PGA CEO Seth Waugh said, “The pitch is perfect. As Kerry [Haigh] said it’s an outdoor sport and obviously we’ll come back after this championship – we haven’t hit a ball yet – see how it all develops and then come back and think about it for ourselves and see what the club wants and other clubs want do.
“We think,” Waugh added, “we’ve added more classes than we’ve taken away by moving to May.”
Haigh, who is in charge of setting up the golf courses, said the PGA was “delighted” with the calendar change. “The condition of the golf course was probably better in May than August as we managed to cope with the stress and heat and although things get kind of tight going into the third week of May we’re happy with what we saw at all.” these venues,” he said.
As for future planned PGA locations, six are on the books and two are in the Northeast: Aronomink in Pennsylvania in 2026 and Baltusrol in New Jersey in 2029. The PGA will be held at the Valhalla in Louisville next year.
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