icy weather might delay phoenix open

The start of the Waste Management Phoenix Open might be delayed on Thursday… because of ice.

British golfers have been used to such conditions for months, but in the Arizona desert unusually cold weather has cashed havoc.

Slugger White, the PGA Tour’s vice president of rules and competition, said in his 30 years with the tour he’s never seen an entire day lost to frozen greens anywhere, and surely did not expect it in Phoenix.

“When they’re frozen like that, they’ll track up and we’d be looking at tracks all week and until they grow out again,” he said. “It would just do so much damage to the golf course.”

A frost delay before Thursday’s first round is inevitable, although White said he didn’t want to anticipate a change in starting times and “shoot yourself in the foot” if the conditions turn out to be better than anticipated.

Still, he did not rule out cancellation of the first round.

“I think there’s a possibility,” he said. “I don’t want to step out there too far, but obviously we’d try to play whenever we could.”

If conditions are the same this morning play might still go on. Or it might not.

“I can’t answer that,” White said. “I’d say maybe. A definite maybe.”

Wade Stettner, an on-site Telvent meteorologist contracted by the PGA Tour, said conditions are likely to be similar Thursday to what was experienced Wednesday at the TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course.

“I expect things to be frozen when we come in,” he said. “We’re expecting another hard freeze with overnight lows in the 20s – very similar conditions.”

But he said winds should die down somewhat today and it will be considerably calmer as the weekend progresses.

“It’s still going to be blowing, but won’t be as extreme,” he said. “The wind gusts should be more like 10 to 20 miles per hour rather than 30. You’ll still feel it.”

Stettner said frost delays might come into play in every round, but he anticipates nearly perfect conditions on Saturday and Sunday once the frost clears. “It will get into the mid- to upper-60s on Saturday and Sunday with a lot of sunshine, so it will be great.”

However, that promising forecast was not much consolation to tournament chairman Mike McQuaid of the sponsoring Thunderbirds, who had to announce that the pro-am at the TPC Scottsdale was off, along with the Grayhawk Pro-Am at nearby Grayhawk Golf Club.

He was confident the first round would be played.

“It doesn’t look like we’ll have the winds,” he said. “It will be warmer and we’ll be able to play golf, hopefully. But there probably will be a frost delay and we’ll certainly be playing up until dark.”

The Phoenix Open field already is limited to 132 players because of short days and potential delays in early February, and when asked if that might number might even be too ambitious, Phil Mickelson answered in a word: “Yes.”

In 2008 a Monday pro-am event was canceled because of rain, but McQuaid said the Wednesday event had never been lost. The weather hit attendance hard: 15,003, compared to 47,476 on Wednesday last year.

Golf fans Mike Barber and Jean Short came to the Valley from Vermont to visit friends and planned to watch golf Tuesday and Wednesday. They at least got Tuesday out of it.

“We just had 30 inches of snow in Vermont,” Short said. “I had hoped I’d get a nice tan today, but at least we got to see some golf Tuesday.”

Barber called it “a disaster,” but as a Green Bay Packers fan since 1959 who still attends some games at Lambeau Field, he said it with a smile.

“This is nothing,” he said, laughing.

“We’re going to go sit in front of my friend’s fireplace, which we never thought we’d be doing on this trip,” Short added.

Barber and Short were standing next to the empty practice facility, after even the driving range, putting green and short-game areas were closed to the Tour pros to protect the course.

Mickelson said he will employ a different Callaway golf ball today to combat the cold.

“I’ve been going to a much softer, much lower compression golf ball (in the cold),” he said. “It helped me last week at Torrey (Pines in San Diego), where it was fairly cold . . .”

Mickelson said the lower-compression ball produces straighter shots in cold conditions.

Bubba Watson, who held off Mickelson to win last week, said he’ll stick with what’s working.

“I’m not going to change because of cold weather, hot weather, whatever,” he said. “I might change my shirt and my sweater, but that’s about it.”

Watson said the conditions won’t favor any particular style of player.

“Long hitters, short hitters, they can all win here,” he said. “I think the cold weather is about you personally. It’s not about your golf game, it’s just more about you staying warm and just being focused and not worrying about how miserable and cold you are at that point.”