Videos: TPC Trying To Get Out From Under Downpours

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Garry Smits calls them a "strange few days" and the videos would seem to confirm freakish weather in advance of The Players where a cool spring had already been causing trouble.

Video of the 18th fairway:



Meanwhile, if the grass growing thing doesn't work out for TPC Sawgrass Agronomy team member Lucas Andrews, he's got the accent and desire to let his hair get messy in high winds to be a CNN hurricane correspondent, as evidenced by the latest post on the TPC Sawgrass Agronomy blog.

Players: Quail Hollow Greens Victim Of 24/7 Media

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It's the media conjuring up a story, say a few players quoted by Jason Sobel on the eve of the Wells Fargo Championship opening round.

“You know, in the age that you guys [in the media] have to talk about something 24 hours a day,” Joe Ogilvie explained, “you’ve got to come up with something.”

“Once the tournament starts, I think all of that stuff will stop and it will be about the tournament, about the shots and the scoring,” said Mickelson. “We’ll see what’s made this tournament great in the past and it won’t be an issue. But I think leading up it will be the talk, because we haven’t had the actual action to discuss yet.”

“One thing I’ve realized is that there’s always a new story,” Trevor Immelman added. “There’s a new story every week. Just when you think you’re going to be able to latch onto something and wear it out for a few months, something else happens. It’s amazing to me. I think it’s just one of those things that we work through and next week there will be another story.”

We'll see what the boys say after they've posted their first round scores!

Juding by this image from Jeff Sisner of the Charlotte Observer from his pro-am slideshow, this is more than just a story whipped up by the 24/7 press.

Quail Hollow To Feature Two One-Week-Old Resodded Greens

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Even with the greens slated for conversion after the tournament, Quail Hollow has made the almost unheard of move to resod less than a week before Wells Fargo Championship play.

Ron Green Jr. with new details of the drastic efforts to make two of the worst greens at Quail Hollow playable.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’ve never done this,” said Cal Roth, senior vice president for agronomy for the PGA Tour. “We’ve had to patch parts of greens a lot of times but this is the first time we’ve done entire greens.”

On a course that is in spectacular condition otherwise, the eighth and 10th greens failed to respond to efforts to generate suitable grass cover. Several weeks ago, both greens were tented in an effort to generate growth. When it didn’t help the 10th green, it was resodded.

When the first resodding failed at No. 10, the decision was made to redo it, this time using a different cultivation approach.

Video: Guan Picks Up The Pace, Almost Makes An Ace

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Ryan Lavner on 14-year-old amateur Tianlang Guan's opening 72 which included a hybrid on 17 that finished a foot from the hole.

There was also noticeably faster pace of play.

And clearly, Guan has made a concerted effort to pick up the pace, perhaps stung by the criticism.

On Thursday, he was almost always the first to walk off the tee box or approach the green.

When he used the restroom between Nos. 5 and 6, he jogged back to the tee so as not to give the appearance that he was lagging behind. Never mind that the group ahead was still in the fairway. His threesome played in 5 hours, 10 minutes.

“He’s not fast, but it was not an issue at all,” said Henrik Norlander, the third player in Guan’s group. “We couldn’t go anywhere. We waited most of the day. I’m sure he learned something at the Masters to speed up a little bit. But it’s tough for him too, because he’s hitting first into every green.”

His round highlights on YouTube.

Tiger Skipping Quail Hollow & Its Troubled Greens

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Doug Ferguson surmises that Tiger's decision not to play the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow is a product of its week-closer-to-Augusta date.

However, photos making the rounds show troubled putting surfaces on a few holes recently rebuilt (again) by the Fazio family re-doing their previous work. And knowing Tiger's history of avoiding potentially suspect greens out of fear of messing up his stroke, it's not a surprise he is passing.

Alex Miceli has the lowdown on the Quail Hollow greens situation, which includes Tour player and member Johnson Wagner blaming the PGA Tour's agronomy staff of making things worse.

Wagner played at Quail Hollow two weeks ago during the Masters and putted on temporary greens at Nos. 8 and 10. Upon seeing the greens Monday, he said it was clear that the putting surfaces would be bumpier then usual, but the eighth and 10th greens were in trouble.

Wagner blamed the problems at No. 10 on extensive top-dressing by the Tour's agronomy staff, which oversees conditions at host courses in advance of tournaments. “It went from a perfectly sodded green three weeks ago, which I thought was unbelievable, to being dead,” Wagner said.

Pazder vehemently disagreed as to why the 10th green needed to be re-sodded. “There were a number of factors involved which contributed to the decline in the conditions of the 10th green,” said Pazder, without elaborating, "but over-top-dressing was not one of them.”

Vijay Survives Last Friday's Idea News Dump; More Fridays Loom

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A cynical friend pointed out--because I know nothing about cynicism--that last Friday was the ideal opportunity for a PGA Tour news dump on expected (or is it anticipated?) disciplinary action in the Vijay Singh deer antler case. What with the post Masters buzz, bombing coverage and other distractions, what better time to bury news of a Hall of Famer's situation?

Well there's always this Friday, as Jason Sobel asked PGA Tour SVP Ty Votaw for the latest news on Singh's case.

When asked Monday about whether a decision has been reached regarding Singh’s situation, Tour executive vice president of communications Ty Votaw simply said, “No.” When asked if there was a timeframe for such a decision, he similarly responded in the negative.