SAN ROQUE, Spain – On a blustery day in Spain with winds howling at 33 mph and lightning-fast greens, Valderrama delivered one of the toughest rounds golf fans will witness this season. At 5:07 p.m. local time, conditions were deemed unplayable at LIV Golf Andalucía, as the balls would no longer stay on the greens due to the high winds.
Round 1 will resume at 8 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET) on Saturday, with Round 2 scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. ET).
When play was suspended, there was a 5-way tie at the top of the leaderboard with Torque GCCaptain Joaquin Niemann, Ripper GC Captain Cameron Smith, Majesticks GC Co-Captain Lee Westwood, Stinger GC’s Branden Grace and Smash GC’s Talor Gooch all at 1-under par.
“Just keep doing what I’m doing,” Smith said. “I hit a lot of drives today that felt like good shots and didn’t quite catch the fairway. Just seemed like one of those days where if you got a bit of a gust, it was just going to take your ball anyway … Did a good job with staying patient. Made a lot of birdies, and like I said, just keep doing what I’m doing. Hopefully I find some more fairways and make some more putts.”
Niemann, who has won four times this season, is bogey free on his round with two holes to play. The only player to have a bogey-free round at Valderrama on LIV Golf was Crushers GC Captain Bryson DeChambeau in 2023 (Rd. 2).
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Fireballs GC Captain Sergio Garcia got off to an up-and-down start in his title defense. The Spaniard, who has won four times in his career at Valderrama, made two birdies and four bogeys to sit at 2-over par for his round, but only three shots off the lead.
A handful of stars, including Legion XIII Captain Jon Rahm (E), Crushers GC’s Paul Casey (+1), RangeGoats GC Captain Bubba Watson (+1) and Legion XIII’s Tyrrell Hatton (+1), are also within striking distance.
The scoring average for the round was a brutal 3.05 and 16 of the 18 holes played over par. The only exceptions were the 5th (-0.11) and the 11th (-0.41).
In other news, LIV Golf has applied again to be included in the Official World Golf Ranking, without any indication of how it will operate differently from when their first application was rejected nearly two years ago.
The OWGR said in a statement Friday it had received the application and has started the review process to determine if the Saudi-funded league of 54 players will be included.
“The OWGR Board is committed to a thorough evaluation process of all applications, and LIV’s application will be reviewed in accordance with OWGR’s criteria to ensure fairness, integrity and consistency,” the OWGR said in a statement. The OWGR board has an annual meeting next week at the British Open.
The OWGR denied the first application in October 2023 — the first full year of the league — saying it could not fairly measure LIV Golf with two dozen other tours around the world because of what amounted to a closed shop, along with the individual competition potentially being compromised by scores counting toward a team result.
LIV now has 54 players — 13 four-man teams and two wild cards — and keeps the roster all season except for alternates used in case of injury.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This piece is courtesy of Mike McAllister in partnership with LIV Golf.
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