Weather Woes at Players

Lee Westwood and Joe Durant ordinarily would be in ideal position at the Players Championship, tied for the lead and probably in the last group to tee off on a Sunday afternoon.

All that got them was rest in what continued to shape up as a bizarre week at Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

Thirty players who thought they were going to resume the second round Saturday morning instead had to erase their scores and start over so everyone could lift, clean and place their balls in the soggy fairways.

It was so sloppy and slippery that two golf carts slid down a hill and into a pond, although both drivers jumped out before their buggies took a plunge. Then came another three-hour rain delay.

There eventually was the kind of golf everyone expects on the TPC at Sawgrass, good and bad.

Durant tied the back-nine record with a 30 for a seven-under-par 65, and Westwood overcame a double bogey early in his round for a 69, leaving them atop the leaderboard when darkness suspended the second round.

The question wasn’t who was leading, but what day it was.

Seventy-one players, including Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, were expected to return at 7:30 a.m. today to finish the second round. That all but assured the third Monday finish in the Players Championship in the last six years, and that’s assuming more rain doesn’t push it to Tuesday.

“The weather is better in England at the moment,” Westwood said. “You just have to put up with it and just be patient and accept it. You’re going to be doing a lot of sitting around.”

Westwood and Durant get to sleep in, knowing that their two-day score of 10-under 134 will put them in good shape.

Zach Johnson made two double bogeys, including a tee shot into the water on the 18th hole, for a two-under 70 that left him one shot behind.