PGA Reset for Today After Rain : Norman Still Leads by Four After One Hole

It took the weatherman to figure out a way to slow Greg Norman’s march to the PGA National Championship.

Steady rains forced a postponement of portions of Sunday’s play and extended until today, weather permitting, the conclusion of the final round of the last of the year’s four major championships.

“Heaven forbid, but we’ll be here all week if we have to,” Mickey Powell, president of the PGA, said in announcing the postponement, only the second time in 67 previous PGAs that weather had extended the tournament an extra day.

Portions of today’s play will be televised nationally by ABC. The 1 1/2 hours of coverage will begin at 1 p.m. PDT on Channel 7.

The forecast for today called for cloudy conditions in the morning with clearing in the afternoon.

Norman, the Australian who has led throughout the tournament, had completed only the first hole, making a scrambling par, when the sirens sounded suspending play at 2:31 p.m. EDT.

The players marked their positions on the saturated Inverness Club course and will resume play from those positions today. All strokes played Sunday will count.

“I don’t think it’s going to affect my play at all,” said Norman, who has won the British Open and two other tournaments this year, been in title contention in both the Masters and U.S. Open, and set a single-season money-winning record in the United States with $664,729.

Norman holds a four-shot advantage with 17 holes to go in the chase for a $140,000 first prize.

The delay, he said, “just throws the whole deal in a mess because everyone has checked out of hotels, their bags packed, reservations made and so on.”

Norman said he “was going to fly to New York Monday morning” for a television show. “Now I’ll get to sleep a little later,” he said.

Norman, who has led since shooting a six-under-par 65 in Thursday’s first round, held a four-shot lead through 54 holes and retained that margin after one hole of play Sunday.

Starting play in wind and rain, he drove into the soggy right rough, chipped back to the fairway, put his third shot on the green and “made four the hard way,” he said, dropping an 18-foot putt.

Bob Tway, a three-time winner on the PGA Tour this year, was playing with Norman in the last threesome and also made par on the one hole he played. He left the course immediately after play was called and was not available for comment.

Tway moved into contention Saturday with a 64 that put him at 206, seven under par. Norman was at 202, 11 under.

Peter Jacobsen, alone at third at the start of the fourth round, bogeyed the first hole and dropped back into a tie at four under par with Payne Stewart. Jacobsen and Stewart also played only one hole.

Thirteen players, those with the highest scores through three rounds, completed play. Those scores will stand.

Hale Irwin led those early finishers with a 68 and a 287 total, three over par. Defending champion Hubert Green was next with a 71 for a 290.

Ben Crenshaw submitted to a lot of locker room jokes about his self-inflicted wound, sustained when a club he tossed into the air during Saturday’s play hit him in the head and gashed his scalp.

After the joshing, Crenshaw played the front side in 33 Sunday and was five under par for the day through 14 holes when play was halted.