Presidents Cup games were postponed due to fog Saturday morning

Those who rose early Saturday morning to watch the first action of the third session of the Presidents Cup may have been disappointed.

After the first game completed the first hole and the second went to its first tees, PGA Tour officials at Royal Montreal sounded the horn and suspended play at 7:23 a.m. ET due to heavy fog.

Tony Finau, who played in the second group and played alongside Xander Schauffele in the four-ball session, had to look at the jumbotron to follow his tee shot, which still reached the fairway. His opponents, Canadians Corey Conners and Mackenzie Hughes, both had drives well to the left, but the home crowd, unable to see where the ball was going, roared in celebration both times.

The left fairway bunker on the 1st hole at Royal Montreal, approximately 270 yards from the tee, was completely obscured by fog when play was stopped.

The PGA Tour initially hoped to keep players in place while they waited for the fog to clear, even moving the first group to a hospitality suite near the second tee, but after about 15 minutes Both first two groups were removed from the golf course as players were still allowed to use the range.

When James Colgan was on site at the Royal Montreal for GOLF this week, he described the morning’s conditions as “foggy, a little cold and frankly surprising that play was allowed to start.”

“If you woke up before dawn for the start of today’s four-ball session, you didn’t see much golf before it was stopped,” Colgan said. “We’ll sit there a little longer and wait. The good news is, if you didn’t get up early that Saturday morning, you can play golf late into the night.”

As NBC began day three coverage at 8 a.m. ET, PGA Tour TV rules director and video analyst Mark Dusbabek reported that it would be some time before play could resume.

“It’s going to take a while for this to burn down,” Dusbabek said. “We need to be able to see and navigate the golf course.”

Around 8:40 a.m., the tour announced a resumption of play at 9 a.m. and adjusted the third and fourth group tee times to accommodate the one-hour, 36-minute delay.

The official PGA Tour forecast for Saturday, prepared by meteorologist Wade Stettner, called for partly cloudy skies and a high of 70 degrees.

There are a total of eight games on the third day of the Presidents Cup, with four four-a-side games starting first thing in the morning and a fourth session of four four-a-side games beginning in the afternoon.

Sunset at Royal Montreal is at 6:41 pm ET tonight.

The Presidents Cup is tied after the Americans won the first four-ball session on Thursday and the Internationals staged a thrilling 5-0 comeback in four-ball on Friday.

This is a developing story and will be updated as new information becomes available.

Jack Hirsh

Golf.com Publisher

Jack Hirsh is an editorial assistant at GOLF. Jack is a Pennsylvania native and a 2020 graduate of Penn State University with degrees in Broadcast Journalism and Political Science. He was captain of his high school golf team and recently returned to the program as head coach. Jack is also still *trying* to stay competitive in the local amateurs. Prior to joining GOLF, Jack worked for two years at a television station in Bend, Oregon, primarily as a multimedia journalist/reporter, but also as a producer, anchor and even weather reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].