The LPGA Tour, with the weather-related fiascos of two recent events still fresh in players’ minds, somehow can’t seem to avoid controversies of Mother Nature’s making.
LPGA players unhappy about weather-delayed PGA Tour golfers warming up on their course
With the LPGA’s event in Kuala Lumpur just two weeks out, some of its players were not happy to see the current PGA Tour event in the area using, and potentially ripping up, the LPGA course for practice during a delay.
Photo by Stanley Chou/Getty Images
This week’s ruckus came about after inclement conditions forced the PGA Tour to halt play for four hours during the second round of the CIMB Classic, and competitors sought any patch of practice-area grass at TPC Kuala Lumpur they could find to warm up for the resumption of the tournament.
The problem, according to some players on the LPGA Tour, was that the guys tearing it up on the venue’s East Course (the men’s tourney was on the West Course) were doing so on the track where the women will play the Sime Darby LPGA Malaysia in two weeks.
Similar concerns about potential divots marring the playing surface for the women when the USGA staged the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open back to back in 2014 proved groundless.
“There were no divots … greens were in perfect shape,” eventual U.S. Women’s Open winner Michelle Wie said back then after playing a pre-tourney practice round. “I was surprised yesterday, there are no divots really anywhere near the green. The practice range looks fantastic. I think the practice facility here is large enough that it can hold two fields. So, yeah, I was very pleasantly surprised.”
Even so, it’s difficult to envision PGA Tour officials allowing the women to take their hacks on a course the men were scheduled to use in the near future, as the caddie who was on the bag for Wie’s Open victory noted:
Wie, by the way, is shaking the rust off her game at this week’s LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship in South Korea — her first post-appendectomy action — and was 1-under and tied for 40th, 10 shots back of 36-hole leader Angel Yin.
