On Saturday, Wyndham Clark produced one of the best rounds ever seen at Pebble Beach, with the US Open champion firing a 12-under round of 60 to jump to the top of the leaderboard.
However, although the American leads the event by one shot from Ludvig Aberg, attention has now turned to Mother Nature, with high winds and rain set to hit the Monterey Peninsula and put the finish of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in doubt.
Speaking to media following the conclusion of play on Saturday, Chief Referee of the PGA Tour, Gary Young, stated: "We're going to be in here at 5.00am tomorrow morning to assess what's going on. We have really high winds forecasted, it hasn't come down at all. He's talking about gusts in the 60s and even above that range, so sustained winds 35 to 40 miles per hour in the morning. So we're going to come in and we are going to make a decision on whether or not we're going to be able to start."
So, could there be a Monday finish at Pebble Beach? Well, according to Young, it is a possibility. "Right now we're scheduled to start at 7.45am. At 5.15am we're going to message the players and let them know whether or not there's going to be a delay to the tee times. If there is, then it's probably going to be a significant delay. We'll let them know. The next update will be at 9.30am. That realistically means we won't start before noon tomorrow and that will give us a little more time to see how things, if it continues to deteriorate, we would make a decision later.
"Obviously our regulations say we need to make every effort to play 72 holes, which includes playing on Monday. Right now that's our thinking. We would then probably, if we can't play tomorrow, we would come in first thing on Monday morning, do it again. We would not start play on Monday if we knew we couldn't finish the round on Monday.
"So the drop-dead time on that would mean we would have to start play on Monday by 10.15am at the latest in order to complete play. So the forecast right now on Monday is for showers in the morning, rain amounts are in the .2 to .4 inches in the morning. So again, we're already dealing with a very soggy golf course and at that point we're making the decision whether or not we think that the standards for professional golf are there."
Despite shooting the lowest round at Pebble Beach. Clark's round involved pick and place conditions, meaning his third round isn't, technically, a course record. However, if the tournament were to finish with 54-holes, he would pick up the trophy and a load of FedEx Cup points.
Revealing that if play does get underway on Sunday then no spectators would be present due to the high winds forecasted, Young remains hopeful play will resume, with the Chief Referee claiming that, if they need to, a Tuesday finish could happen in the most extreme circumstances.
"Our regulation states that we can't start play on Monday without knowing that we could finish play on Monday. If we did that and then, for some reason, weather rolled in on us that caused us to delay again, if more than half the field has finished play, then we would extend play into Tuesday. But we would need more than half of them to have completed their round on Monday."
