2014 WGC Cadillac Championship: Tee times, pairings for Friday’s round

After the worst weather season in years in 2013, the PGA Tour has largely snuck through the first two-plus months of 2014 without much delay (aside from some hiccups at Pebble). But the relatively good run ended on Thursday when the new-look Doral was hammered with a severe storm right in the middle of the first round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship. The ensuing delay lasted almost two and a half hours and ended any chance of the first round finishing before darkness in Miami.

With only six players through their first 18 holes, the Tour will send everyone back out at 8:45 a.m. ET to finish up the first round. The last groups of the day are just through nine holes, so everyone is now on the back side and should be able to wrap things up around 11 a.m. ET. The plan right now is to send the second round off as originally scheduled and keep the tee times as is, and unless there are more interruptions in the morning, that should happen.

The WGC events always provide the Tour with a little more flexibility when it comes to scheduling because they are limited field tourneys with no cut. They have some of the smaller fields of the entire season for the first two rounds of an event, so a big weather delay doesn’t throw off the overall scheduling for a Sunday finish and the weather makes it look like we’ll be back on track by Friday night.

The Tour will continue to send groups off split tees and in threesomes for the second round. It’s going to be a long day for most of the field, but in particular, Tiger Woods, who has 26 holes ahead of him with a balky back. Woods played a sloppy birdie-less 10 holes on Thursday, making two bogeys and struggling to find any rhythm with his putter. He’s on the bottom half of the leaderboard and will work to get it back to even over his remaining eight holes in the morning, and then try to post a number in the 60s on his second tour through the new Gil Hanse redesign. He’ll be out again with Adam Scott and Henrik Stenson in a group of the top three players in the world. The back looked fine on Thursday, including after the lengthy delay of sitting around, but Friday will be a long march and put it to the test.

Again, here’s the schedule for Friday at the Blue Monster

First round restart: 8:45 a.m. ET

And here’s the full tee sheet for Friday’s second round: