Golf: Winter Makes An Appearance In South Florida For The Honda Classic
By Les Bailey
As the Honda Classic golf tournament gets underway on Thursday morning, along with the strongest field of top World Class players in the new season, winter will also be in attendance in South Florida. Not only will the players have to battle each other, and the Bear Trap at the PGA National Champion Course in Palm Beach Gardens, old man winter will be a worthy opponent as well.
Players will have to deal with soggy conditions in the early going, but the conditions will steadily get worse throughout the tournament as the weekend nears. At this writing, the temperature is a mild 58 degrees with an expected high of 77, and as the leaders arrive at the most difficult part of the course, they will face 10-20 mile an hour winds to add some excitement to their visit to the Bear Trap. The Jack Nicklaus designed monster is already one of the toughest layouts on the tour, the weather will undoubtedly make it worse.
I know. If you are sitting in a blizzard up North, you likely don’t have a lot of sympathy in your heart at this point, but..there is always a but, 58 degrees with a wind from the North to go along with the high content of moisture in the air can make for a freezing round of golf. In fact, as the weekend progresses, the temperatures will go down, and rain is in the forecast for the weekend.
You will not likely see the wind problems we had at The Tournament of Champions, or a snow storm to stop play, but with the flatness of the land(it’s a swamp), it will not provide much of a wind break, players will earn their share of the $ 6 Million Dollar purse this week. The winner will pocket just over a Million in prize money and 500 FedEx points.
Friday is forecasted to be the best of the four days with a possibility of some showers, and a high of 71. For Saturday and Sunday they are projecting the possibility of showers, and temperatures hovering in the mid 60’s. That will send folks in South Beach to the comfort of their homes, and hot tubs.
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