Tour bans fans from Wyndham first round due to weather threats

As Tropical Storm Debby descends on the mid-Atlantic, it's the PGA Tour's bad luck that the Wyndham Championship, the regular-season finale, happens to be played in Greensboro, N.C., starting Thursday. Up to eight inches of rain are expected in the area over the first two days, and with wind gusts that could reach 25-30 mph, it's clear that logistics in Greensboro could become a nightmare, and that a bit of extra planning is necessary. The situation already is concerning enough that the tour announced on Wednesday evening that no fans would be allowed on the grounds Thursday.

Enter Ken Tackett, an 11-year PGA tour veteran and former jazz drummer, who is now in his fourth year as the tour's chief referee. Among Tackett's responsibilities are figuring out how to manage a situation like the Wyndham, and we reached out to him Wednesday afternoon to get a sense of what to expect this week. Our conversation, lightly edited for content and clarity, follows.

Golf Digest: What's the latest over there? It doesn't look pretty for Thursday.

Ken Tackett: As you can imagine, we've been doing a little bit of planning and talking and going through various different scenarios. As far as the weather, we have a little disagreement in the models. If you asked me yesterday, I would've said we could get a little golf in Thursday before it got shut down; then this morning even that didn't look as promising, and then this last one, there's some disagreement about how much rain we're going to get early, and now again there could be a possibility of getting some golf in. And if we can get three or four hours of golf in the morning, that could be helpful and beneficial to us potentially finishing on Sunday. It's the old adage of, play golf when you can play.

This might be a dumb question, but let's say there's just heavy rain but no thunder or lightning, is there a threshold when you decide it's just too much rain, and we can't keep going? Is there a science to that, or do you eyeball it?

There is some science to it, only because we've been here for so many years, we know what kind of volume the golf course holds. We know the drainage, and how much it takes to flood the lower parts of the golf course, so we can figure out if, for instance, it could hold two inches in three hours. We have that knowledge of the facility and the course, and the truth is this week, once the greens go, we kind of know that we're done. There's no need to try to squeegee anything, because it's just going to continue to build.

Certain weeks, you might get a downpour and you'd say, let's squeegee it and it's going to die off, but we know this week it's just going to continue to build through the day. And then, later today there's chances of a tornado watch developing on the east side of Debby as she heads north, and you can get these dangerous types of situations. Those are all possibilities later in the day.

The key is, what are we getting overnight? And can we get some golf played before it gets shut down and the course becomes unplayable.

I'm curious about each course having a different threshold. Do you know how much rain it's going to take at each place to make it unplayable?

So, take a course like Augusta National; it has amazing drainage, and it can sustain some significant rain and kind of muscle through it. But every course is just a little different in the composition in where it sits. Here, we're down in the little valley in the neighborhood. And so we have three or four holes that are our early barometer of knowing when it's time to suspend.

The tees and greens, those are the things that will shut you down. We play preferred lies in the fairways, which lets us play golf, so the fairways might just be messy and wet, and that's why we play preferred lies, for these extreme conditions. But there's nothing you can do for the tees, and when the greens give up, that's it.

It sounds like you're definitely planning for a stoppage of play Thursday.

All the models kind of agree that at some point tomorrow, it's just a matter of time. And I know everyone wants us to make a decision now for tomorrow, but having the experience of doing this, having dealt with rain and inclement weather, you do have to just wait and see what Mother Nature brings. It's a little different than what we dealt with at Pebble earlier in the season, when we knew there were winds forecasted into 60 mph and trees down. Those conditions are a little different. Here, we're seeing 20 to 25 mph winds with some gusts up to 30 mph. Definitely significant, but nothing that would cause us to stop. We play through those types of conditions all the time.

How long would you extend the tournament, if necessary? Is it different this week because it's the regular season finale and the finishing order of the players determines who makes the playoffs?

That's one of the important reasons for having strong regulations, and these scenarios are well thought out and we play out the different possibilities. The key word is that we always go to Monday if necessary. And if you really think about it, if we lose an entire day, that Monday would kind of take over that lost day. So you can see from the favorable forecast on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday that there's a really good chance of us being able to get a lot of golf in. That gives us a little comfort, to know that.

But that's also why playing some golf tomorrow could be beneficial. The sooner we get back out playing golf again on Friday when it clears out, the better chance we have to finish earlier. There are all these scenarios. If we can make the cut Saturday evening, we could play 36 holes and finish on Sunday.

It sounds like you'll be able to finish comfortably by Monday, at the latest. Would you consider going to Tuesday if it became necessary?

If we get 50 percent of the fourth rounds completed on Monday, we would finish the round up on Tuesday morning. So if we got to that type of dire situation where we just keep getting pushed back, and we can still get more than half the field to complete the fourth round on Monday, then we would come back Tuesday morning.

And if not?

We'd go back to the results after 54 holes for all players.

But you're feeling pretty good that it won't come to that.

We see the models and we know what's going on. We do have to get through this storm first to see what it brings. Does it bring five to seven inches? Does it bring three inches? Do we have trees down, do we have trouble getting the golf course playable? But like I said, Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are all pretty favorable conditions.

What kind of communication do you give to the players at this point?

We're actually just crafting some of that communication now to send out tonight. We'll send something to the effect of, "due to Hurricane Debby"—it is Debby, right? I keep on saying Dorothy for some reason.

You're thinking of the “Wizard of Oz.”

Yeah, exactly. So, "due to Hurricane Debby, we're monitoring the situation" and we'll explain that we'll send them an update in the morning with the current plans. I'm absolutely just crafting this as I'm talking to you now, but within the next two hours I'll have something ready to go out. It's a short note, just a kind of heads-up, pay attention. Because we don't want the guys to have to come all the way out here when we know that we're not going to be playing golf.

So, in the morning, we'll be here at 4 a.m., we'll be seeing what happens overnight, looking at the forecasts and the radar, even things like, how the bands are, did it miss us to the east or west, are we getting the volume, are we able to play golf? And then we'll message the players that morning, saying something like, round one is on time, plan accordingly, or the opposite. But we'll also be messaging the staff, the media, volunteers, television, everybody that's involved with the tournament.

What about the fans?

Right now the organizers are crafting a message to not have fans or volunteers out here in the morning, just knowing that to bring them out here for three, four hours and then having to evacuate, it probably doesn't make sense. So they're making that decision right now. [At 5:38 p.m., an email was sent out confirming that fans wouldn't be allowed on the grounds Thursday.] It's just one less thing; we'd be trying to get the buses going, and then we'd probably have to evacuate and that's just more trouble.

It sounds like logistically this stuff spreads out pretty quickly.

You've got to have the staff at the clubhouse ready preparing breakfast, the practice facilities, the physios, everybody that supports the players, and all that. And if we had some sort of imminent situation where we knew exactly what kind of volume we'd have or that the course would be unplayable, it would make the decision easier, but there's still a chance that tomorrow morning we can play golf. And if we can, we will.