PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — There was an early omen that this year’s Players Championship, a signature event of the PGA Tour, would radically defy golf tournament convention. It arrived before the sun rose for Thursday’s first round in the form of an ominous-sounding weather delay, delivered as the golfers slept.
In the end, most of them probably felt like they never woke up, as the ensuing five days of golf unfolded like a vengeful nightmare.
“It was brutal out there,” Rory McIlroy, the four-time major winner, said of conditions that included 40 mile-an-hour winds, more than four inches of dousing rain, tornado warnings and temperatures that occasionally dipped to the mid-30s.