GOLF
Rain a pain for club with soggy history
ST. LOUIS — When the fans came out to watch Tiger Woods, there was no tournament. Arnold Palmer once played in a tournament, but fans couldn’t get to the golf course.
St. Louis added yet another chapter to its dreary decade of golf history when the first round of the BMW Championship was washed out by storms that dumped 3 inches of rain on Bellerive Country Club.
“We do know how to deal with adversity,” said Jerry Ritter, the general chairman of the BMW Championship and a Bellerive member.
Dozens of players were getting ready for the American Express Championship the morning of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It was the first big event in St. Louis since the 1992 PGA Championship. Woods was playing in St. Louis for the first time in his career, but he only got in a practice round before the event was canceled.
Three years later, the U. S. Senior Open came to town, and rain washed out the second round Friday. At least they got in the tournament, with Peter Jacobsen going 36 holes on a creaky hip Sunday to win.
Palmer made his only appearance in the Boone Valley Classic on the Senior PGA Tour in 2000, and the King can draw a big gallery anywhere. But storms that week caused such a problem with traffic that fans couldn’t get to Boone Valley.
The silver lining? Palmer returned four years later for the Senior Open, and with the cut pushed back to Saturday because of the rain, they at least saw him on the weekend.
Thursday’s scheduled first round was postponed until today, with 36 holes on Saturday to get back on schedule.
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