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It’s PGA Championship week, but if your excitement for the event hasn’t quite started to build, we’ll forgive you. For many golf fans, the curiosity of how the top pros in the world would play Philadelphia Cricket Club in their one-off visit to the venerable course for last week’s Truist Championship delayed their anticipation for what’s to come at Quail Hollow Club.
But now that we’ve moved down the East Coast to Charlotte, North Carolina, another factor is getting in the way of boosting our eagerness factor: weather. As tour pros arrived on Monday morning, they were greeted with rain that doesn’t look like it’s going to let up for a while. It was bad enough that the PGA of America announced at 6:37 a.m. that the course would be closed all day to spectators (players could still practice, pending any lightning in the area). Anybody with a Monday ticket could use it on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Unfortunately, the forecast looks similarly wet for the next two practice days. Here’s a look at the forecast:
AccuWeather
The saving grace, at least, is the four competition days look fairly promising, but the three practice round days suggest there might not be a lot of practicing going on.
Yeah, that looks like an awful lot of rain heading Charlotte’s way.
The good news for competitors in the field is that Quail Hollow is a yearly stop on the PGA Tour, so familiarity with the course won’t be a significant issue. The bad news is PGA of America officials are likely to be hamstrung with a soft course (even with the SubAir system in place below the greens at Quail Hollow) that will probably produce a lot of red numbers—and play into the hands of the longest hitters on tour.
The other interesting extreme to watch for is the quick change in temperatures. On Monday the highs are expected to be in the upper 60s. Come Saturday, the thermometer could reach 90.
Perhaps the one saving grace for the week is that the winds are expected to be reasonable every day.
Main Image: Supplied
