Raul Pereda DQ’d from the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in uncommon style on Saturday morning.
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The late-Friday WD is a ceremony of passage on the PGA Tour.
Should you’re not acquainted, this custom takes place on Fridays when the PGA Tour fails to finish 36 holes earlier than darkness. On these days, gamers who know they’re just a few holes faraway from lacking the reduce when play begins on Saturday will as an alternative decide to WD. In concept, the choice is economical: saving a participant the price of a resort for the night and permitting them to get a head begin on journey to their subsequent vacation spot.
A lot much less widespread is the scenario that arose on Saturday morning on the Butterfield Bermuda Open, during which professional Raul Pereda allowed himself to be assessed an early-Saturday DQ.
The scenario started on Friday night in Bermuda, the place Pereda was amongst a gaggle of professionals ending up the second spherical of play because the solar dipped behind the clouds. With the tempo of play slipping and climate solely exacerbating the issue, the Tour was unable to complete its second spherical of play earlier than blowing the horn for darkness. Simply 10 gamers had been implicated within the spherical 3 delay, together with Pereda, leaving every to return to the course at 6:45 a.m. the next morning to complete out the final vestiges of spherical 2.
But on Saturday morning at 7:19 a.m. native time — half-hour after play restarted on the Butterfield — Pereda was DQ’d by the PGA Tour for failing to indicate as much as his tee time. Relatively than WD, Pereda allowed the Tour to DQ him for “not being in place to play” when the horn sounded once more.
Fortunately, Pereda had little to lose. The 28-year-old PGA Tour rookie confronted near-zero odds of creating the reduce earlier than the DQ. He was 4 pictures outdoors of the cutline with two holes to play when the horn blew on Friday, that means he wanted to play his last three holes — a par-3 and par-4 — in a mixed four-under to make it into the weekend.
Nonetheless, the scenario was uncommon for PGA Tour circles for skipping over the well-established custom of WDing earlier than the beginning of play on Saturday, as fellow professional Paul Barjon did simply minutes earlier than play started on Saturday.
Andrew Novak and Rafael Campos share the lead on the Butterfield Bermuda Championship heading into Sunday’s last spherical.
