The Ladies Disregard Tradition

Of all the interesting tournaments this week -- Sergio's attempts to play through controversy at the BMW and the first Champions Tour major of the year, for example -- the Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic seems the most interesting.

You see, they had a little problem...



In case you haven't heard, the Bahamas got over 14 inches of rain a couple of days ago -- apparently the worst storm there in 20 years -- and it's disrupted everything from businesses and schools to golf. The course is underwater and they couldn't even get the practice range cleared until Thursday. As a result, the LPGA can't play a normal tournament.

But their solution is unusual. Apparently they have 12 holes clear and they have pumps going like crazy to try and clear the other 6 holes... but it's going to take a while. So they cancelled the Thursday round and will play a 12-hole round on Friday, probably another 12-hole round on Saturday, make NO CUT and, if everything goes well, play all 18 holes on Sunday.

That means they'll have -- if everything goes well -- a 42-hole tournament. Wild, huh?

This is the first time this tournament has been played so the LPGA definitely wants to get it in. The tournament will still count toward everything like normal and, if I understand this correctly, they'll award the normal moneys to the top 70-plus-ties at the end.

GC will carry the (now) first round at 6:30pm ET tonight. It should be interesting, since one of the suggestions for speeding up recreational golf involves cutting down the number of holes in a round. This may give us a front-row seat for a test of the idea.

The photo came from the tournament page at LPGA.com.