Absurd winds and rain force European Tour to cancel Madeira Islands Open

It takes a truly unique set of circumstances for a golf tournament to be completely abandoned. Tournament officials, whether it’s the PGA Tour or European Tour, will do everything to make sure a tournament is officially in the books.

At the Madeira Islands Open this week over on the Euro Tour, event organizers had no choice but to abandon the tournament. After ridiculous winds wiped out the first round, the event was cut to 54 holes -- never ideal and already a pretty dramatic move. Then unrelenting rain made it a 36-hole tournament. They even said they would squeeze the players through as many holes as possible over the weekend using a shotgun start! That’s a truly an extreme measure.

The weather and golf gods, however, forced total cancellation of the event (for just the third time in the history of the Euro Tour).

But when you have to hold your winter hat down, do you really need that fancy tool to measure the wind speed?

After those winds crushed the course, which is one of the most scenic in the world, the rain basically put it under water for the rest of the weekend.

While the field was embarrassingly thin (only one player from the top 200 in the world rankings), it was the first European Tour event of the year actually on the continent of Europe. With its cancellation, now that first official event in Europe won’t happen until the Spanish Open in mid-May, just one week before the BMW PGA at Wentworth, the Euro Tour’s marquee event.

All photos by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images