Rain rules the day at Manitoba Open

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This article was published 18/08/2022 (1479 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mother Nature is your clubhouse leader.

The rain didn’t go away. And so the long-awaited return of the Manitoba Open has been forced to wait one more day.

Play was set to begin Thursday morning, but overnight storms and showers that wouldn’t stop rendered Southwood Golf & Country Club unplayable, with accumulations estimated to be four inches over 18 hours. After hours of delays, the decision to call it off was made by mid-afternoon.

Round 1 will now get underway on Friday at 7:30 a.m., with PGA Tour Canada organizers still hoping to get a full tournament in by Sunday. Fortunately, the forecast looks a lot more cooperative, with plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures apparently in store.

“The greens staff did a great job trying to get the course ready, but it’s just too wet and it rained too long,” said PGA TOUR Canada tournament director Matt Delaney. “We will do our best to hold a 72-hole tournament, and there’s an outside chance we can do that if the weather cooperates, and we have a 36-hole cut without a significant number of players. The plan would be to play 36 holes Sunday. We’ll have to see what happens.”

Dicey weather is nothing new for golfers and tour officials this year. The Elk Ridge Open in Saskatchewan in late June was ultimately wiped out entirely due to saturated course conditions caused by near-record preciptiation.

A field of 156 payers are in town to compete for $200,000 in prize money and jockeying for ranking positions as they try to make the jump to the Korn Ferry Tour, which is the feeder to the PGA. This is the seventh of 10 stops during the 2022 season — and the first event in Winnipeg since 2019 due to the global pandemic. The 2020 and 2021 events were cancelled due to COVID-19.

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Mike McIntyre
Reporter

Mike McIntyre is a sports reporter whose primary role is covering the Winnipeg Jets. After graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College in 1995, he spent two years gaining experience at the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 1997, where he served on the crime and justice beat until 2016. Read more about Mike.

Every piece of reporting Mike produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.