Players at the AIG Women’s Open this week are set for brutal conditions with gusts of up to 45mph predicted for the opening round at St Andrews.
R&A Chief Executive Martin Slumbers says that the course has been ‘slowed’ down but admits there is a risk that play could be delayed in round one, with the “big fear” that golf balls could be moved by winds on the Old Course’s more exposed greens.
Slumbers suggested that greens will be rolling around the 9.6 mark on the stimpmeter and said that the course has received extra water to try and keep balls stationary amid the gale-force winds predicted.
“So the forecast is sort of settling down to being pretty windy tomorrow, particularly tomorrow. There is a small but a realistic chance of 40, 45 mile-an-hour winds tomorrow. But the met office who help us here have been forecasting this for a while now,” Slumbers said in his address to media on Wednesday.
“We have slowed the golf course down quite a bit. We’ve raised the height of cut on the greens. We’ve put a bit of water on them to help them grow a little bit. We’ve got some pretty good ideas about where we can put the pins to actually protect it as much as we possibly can.
“Most importantly, we will set it up in a way that the players can play. The good news is the wind is forecast all four days to come from pretty much the same quadrant, so we know where we can put the pins to give them some room.
“There is a risk that we’ll have delays in play tomorrow, but we’ll deal with that. I think the best players in the world want a bit of a hard challenge. I just hope it doesn’t blow so hard that we can’t play.”
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While the R&A chief is worried about the possibility of winds blowing balls around on the exposed greens, he is thankful for the 2019 Rule change involving the ‘stop point’ of your ball once it has been marked on the green.
The new change meant that once you have marked, lifted and replaced your ball, that now acts as your ‘stop’ point. If the ball moves thereafter whether that be down to wind. water or any other natural force then you are entitled to put the back back on that spot – rather than playing it from the ball’s new position.
“No, it’s not as simple as that,” Slumber said on if balls moving will be the cause of a delay to play, before…
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