Jul. 25—As Loyola Marymount’s Alejandro Alonso stood over his tee shot on the 18th hole, a boom of thunder loudly announced the worst-kept secret at the 49th Palmetto Amateur.
Mother Nature wields an awful lot of influence over how this golf tournament will finish — maybe not who wins, but when it’s won.
So it’s not really a secret, given that it is this part of the country and it is this time of the year. But it’s something that’s been dreaded ever since this week’s tournament dates first appeared on the 10-day forecast.
Play was delayed near the end of Wednesday’s opening round, and the rains came again early Thursday and threatened to reappear throughout the afternoon — and Friday afternoon, but with a clear forecast for Saturday’s final round.
That’s why so many groups expressed a sense of relief after walking off the 18th green.
“It was honestly a lot of fun, and that was the approach I tried to take today,” said Santa Clara’s JP Odland. “Because I knew people were going to get frustrated, and I was going to get frustrated, and it was going to be wet and gross. Just tried to enjoy every shot, and when the rain came it was kind of fun for us. Tried to make it fun.”
Odland had the right playing partner for that in Temple’s Joseph Morganti, as each fed off each other’s good energy to post quality scores (70 for Odland, 68 for Morganti) to rise up the leaderboard midway through play at Palmetto Golf Club.
“It’s great. It’s why you do it,” Morganti said. “It’s why you want to be out here. Any time you get to play with a good player like JP, you’re going to play better, just watching him and feeding off that energy.”
Some were dealt a better hand than others in terms of the weather — and some responded to the conditions better than others. The University of Alabama’s William Jennings had the low round of the day Thursday with a 66, and Elon University’s Jack Wieler was right behind him with a 67.
“We got lucky. We only played the first two holes in it, and then on 15 it kind of came up again,” Morganti said. “Just took a pause, both of us, and regrouped and made two good shots. He had a good par. I had a good birdie. And we just kind of trucked along all day.”
Morganti has some experience at Palmetto, having played twice in the Palmetto Intercollegiate for Temple. He used some of that past knowledge in order to turn in a score in the 60s — there were actually more Thursday (nine) than Wednesday (four) — and surge to within four shots of solo Sam Jackson at the halfway mark.
Odland came to Palmetto thinking this might be a cakewalk — 6,100 yards is much shorter than what he’s used to playing in college and other amateur tournaments, so how hard could it be? Then he sent his first putt in a practice round 30 yards past the hole and back down into the first fairway.
Lesson learned.
They lost the third member of their group, Stetson’s Bradley Goldstein, to a withdrawal early in the round, leaving them to play the remainder of the day as a twosome.
Morganti stressed the importance of making it through the round without another delay. They had good momentum working in their favor, and they wanted to keep it going. They both know how a weather stoppage can throw off a player’s game, and Odland couldn’t help but admit he wouldn’t be heartbroken if it poured later in the day.
“I mean, we kind of got a little bit yesterday when we had to wait, like, an hour between my approach on 18 and my putt,” he said. “I’m glad we got it all in today. I don’t wish a ton of rain for the other competitors, but it might be nice. I don’t know.”
