GOLF ROUNDUP : International Format Clouded by Weather

Dan Pohl led when a lightning storm forced suspension of play Friday in the second round of the $1.2-million International golf tournament at Castle Rock, Colo.

The lead at this stage has virtually no meaning. The delay, on the other hand, could push its completion to Monday.

“Under this format,” Duke Butler, tournament director for the PGA Tour, said, “I don’t think we’d want to go to a three-round tournament.”

Seventy-one players were on the Castle Pines Golf Club course when play was halted. Some late starters had as many as 16 holes to play. And this is where the tournament format creates a problem.

In the International, medal scores do not count; only points for the score on each hole: eight for double eagle, five for eagle, two for birdie, zero for par, minus-one for bogey and minus-three for double bogey and higher.

After 36 holes, only the top 72 players advance. If there is a tie for the last qualifying position, a playoff is held.

That is ahead today, along with third-round play. The third round, like the first two, is a competition to advance, with 24 players going to the final round. Again, a playoff is likely.

Showers and thundershowers are forecast.

Pohl is coming off a five-week break.

“I’m the most surprised person here,” Pohl said after scoring 17 points in a round that included six birdies and an eagle-three on the 17th hole, where he hit a six-iron within inches of the cup.

“Not having played in so long, not having much confidence in my swing, I had no idea anything like that was going to come out,” he said after compiling a medal score of 64.

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Bruce Crampton, with a 66, was the leader in the first round of the $450,000 GTE Northwest Classic at Kenmore, Wash., but he had to share the attention with Arnold Palmer’s hole in one.

Crampton’s six-under-par round on the 6,455-yard, par-72 Inglewood Country Club course put him one stroke ahead of Palmer, Miller Barber and Larry Laoretti in the Senior PGA Tour event.

Palmer, 62, got the 16th hole in one of his career when he holed a three-iron on the 193-yard eighth hole.

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Nancy Lopez, Judy Dickinson and Barb Mucha shot five-under-par 67s to share the first-round lead of the Northgate Computer Classic at Brooklyn Park, Minn.