Q. PGA TOUR chief referee this week, Stephen Cox. We had a nearly four-hour delay until the start of the second round today. Had those really high winds; gusts up to 50 miles per hour. You had some fans maybe on Twitter wondering why weren't the guys playing in the elements this morning, which is easy to say for most, but just curious, what went into the decision to push play back to this afternoon?
STEPHEN COX: So I think I put it into two buckets. When we were assessing the golf course, which we did very early this morning to avoid people coming out here, our athletes going out very early in preparation for what would've been a 6:55 tee time.
So the first element is from a playability standpoint, can the golf course cope with the intensity of the winds, which you pointed out was going to be gusting upwards of 50 miles per hour.
It had already taken since Monday, since the forecast had come out, we had already taken steps to reduce the green speeds down from (indiscernible) target speed about 12 feet here in Vegas down to 10 feet. Obviously we took the additional maintenance to not mow the greens overnight to ensure we could play golf at some point.
Then the second part to that playability is if the balls aren't moving to the extent where it's going to get ridiculous, which they were, at what point is it still conducive to playing golf at the highest level. Any time you're getting gusts in the 50 mile and hour range that's throws a question mark there.
So we had an uncertainty in that first bucket.
The second bucket was easy for us in terms of safety of what we need to not only operate inside the ropes, like caddies, players, walking scorers, et cetera, but those people on the side, too operationally and from a maintenance perspective to get the golf course ready for our athletes.
We just didn't feel given gusts of 50 miles per hour it was safe for those people to operate at those early hours. We needed the additional time to assess the damage, and we needed the additional time from a safety perspective to secure what was out there.
And that time also the forecast was going to drop off in terms of intensity aligned nicely, and we felt that at 10:55, that four hours, that allowed us to do what we needed to do and for those winds to drop to satisfy that first bucket.
It's difficult out there. It really is.
We've had the occasional ball move as I'm sure you've seen. These winds are going to continue all the way through to when we'll suspend play tonight. It's going to be a challenging day.
Q. It's a challenging day when you're waiting for the wind gusts to drop to 35 miles per hour for play to be able to resume. Thanks for the time.
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