Newsday (N.Y.): Bubba Watson, Molinari emerge from fog to lead PGA Championship

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. -- It was golf's Unfinished Symphony, a round that for the longest time couldn't get out of the fog and never did get to the end.

It was Day One of the 92nd PGA Championship, which when the weather cleared offered Tiger Woods' return from the depths and two disparate sorts, Bubba Watson and Francesco Molinari, temporarily on top of the leader board.

They came in with 4-under- par 68s, but still out on the Whistling Straits course when darkness moved in were two others at 4 under, Ernie Els and Matt Kuchar.

Play had had to be delayed 3 hours, 10 minutes at the start Thursday because the shoreline along Lake Michigan looked like something along San Francisco Bay, pea-soup stuff through which golfers couldn't see 100 yards.

That meant the late starters had no chance to get in a full 18, and with more fog forecast this morning, there's a feeling this tournament might last for days.

Woods, who was to go at 8:20 a.m., finally hit his first shot at 11:30, which since he shot a 1-under 71 -- he made birdie at his last hole, the ninth -- didn't prove to be detrimental. On the contrary, his play was greatly improved from his awful finish last weekend in the WGC-Bridgestone.

Phil Mickelson, who didn't begin until around 4:45 p.m., was 1 under par through 11 holes when play was called.

Watson, like Mickelson, a lefthander, contended he was not bothered by the delay. "I get excited about playing golf,'' Watson said. "So I stayed up late [Wednesday] night when I should have been going to bed. My wife was yelling at me to go to bed. I was up playing games on my phone . . . I wasn't myself this morning when I woke up. So maybe the delay helped, since I didn't have much energy.''

Molinari, from Italy, said of Whistling Straits: "It seems like some courses in Europe, but it's a lot softer, and I like the course. And watching Graeme McDowell [U.S. Open] and Louis Oosthuizen [British Open] win, we [Europeans] think we can win a major as well.''

"It played like an American course today,'' said Charles Howell III (69) of Whistling Straits, which looks like a British links but requires different shots. "It was a bit bizarre.''

Howell got up at 5:30 a.m. for what he thought would be an 8:50 a.m. start that evolved to a noon start at the 10th tee. He quickly birdied 11, 12, 13 and 14.

"I had breakfast three times,'' said Howell, as Woods said he did. "To have the start I did was beneficial because it calmed me down a bit.''

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