Sports

Big storm puts Tiger on hold

ORLANDO — Tiger Woods’ pursuit of the world No. 1 ranking, his eighth Arnold Palmer Invitational title and sixth victory in the last calendar year was put on hold for a day after vicious weather — which included a tornado — ravaged Bay Hill and the surrounding areas yesterday.

Play was suspended at 2:03 p.m., moments after Woods birdied his second hole of the final round to take a three-shot lead, and it never resumed. The course was saturated by 1 1/2 inches of rain, which washed out a number of bunkers. Tree limbs were down all over the course from wind gusts reported at 60 mph.

The final round will resume at 10 a.m. today (televised by the Golf Channel) with Woods on the third hole with a three-shot lead over Rickie Fowler, Keegan Bradley, Ken Duke and John Huh.

“At least we got a little activity in, so we’re not completely stagnant,’’ Woods said. “We’ve dealt with this before. We had that fog delay in San Diego, and this is part of playing outside. We’ve got to deal with conditions like this.’’

One of Woods’ two victories this year went to a Monday finish when fog delayed the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in January. This is the third PGA Tour event of the year forced to finish on a Monday.

“It just got to the point where we weren’t going to be able to get the golf course ready,” said Mark Russell, the PGA Tour’s vice president of Rules and Competition. “We just got unlucky with the weather. That micro-burst on the radar was about the size of a pinhead, but it hit us directly. … If we had been 30 miles north or 30 miles south, we might have been OK.’’

With severe weather in the forecast entering the day, the PGA Tour, NBC and tournament officials considered moving the tee times earlier, but opted not to, which ended up being a mistake.

“Everybody was involved,” Russell said. “Our television partners were totally involved in the conversation. We laid out the scenarios, and we decided we’re going to take a chance. If we played early, it was going to be a tape”‘-delay situation. People were going to know who won before it came on television, so it defeats our television partners.”

“They wanted to take a chance. They’ve been involved in several situations where we played early, and it didn’t rain. It was just unfortunate.”

Before play was suspended, some remarkable things took place.

One was Matt Every holing out his 124-yard second shot for eagle from a submerged water lie on the par-4 third hole. Another was Sergio Garcia climbing a tree to hit his second shot on the 10th hole, which he double-bogeyed.

Garcia withdrew from the tournament two holes later. Given the fact there are 43 players who have not completed their final round, don’t be surprised to see more withdrawals before play resumes.