Toyota Tour Cup at La Quinta
Carlton Oaks Recap:
The Tour Cup players shuffled their way down to beautiful San Diego for the season’s third event at Carlton Oaks Golf Club. Mother Nature treated everyone to perfect 80 and sunny golf weather for most of round one before the clouds and cold breeze moved in ahead of the storm to come on Sunday.
Carlton Oaks’ challenging layout will test the most skilled golfers even with perfect weather and it showed as only one player was under par after round one (Kento Yamawaki -2, 70). Several players were close and hoping to give him a run for his money: Yang at E, 72), McCoy, Pan, O’Hern, Stephenson and Xie all tied at +1, 73. It was anyone’s game at this point. The girls side had a similar result with not one card under par. Leading the way for the girls was Alyaa Abdulghany of Newport Beach and Temecula’s Serena Sepersky both tied at +2, 74 with several others within a couple strokes. However, the great equalizer (rain & wind) would challenge the field for round two.
Day two began with cold, cloudy and windy conditions and looked as though the storm would pass right by, but just when all hopes were up it hit. Rain began to fall steadily and gradually heavier as time passed. Constant communication with staff on the course was paramount as water began accumulating all over the course. Several places inundated with water created impassable situations and once the greens failed to drain, the decision was made to suspend play. Officially at 9:48am the Tournament Director made the call to suspend play and all players were off the course and inside the clubhouse within 10 minutes. Players gathered for an announcement that the plan was to resume by 11:30am after a thorough inspection of the entire golf course. Luckily the cell had passed and the course was draining well. After much help from the course superintendents and their staff squeegeeing greens and clearing drains, the course was playable again. Players were given the announcement at 11:00am that play would resume at 11:30am and to report back to their holes and be ready to play.
The weather cleared nicely and it was once again great weather for golf. Players and parents alike were in good spirits as they were able to shed layers of rain gear.
Alyaa Abdulghany followed her low first round with a tournament low three-under, 69 to claim her first TTC victory of the young 2016 season. The boys, however, required two extra holes to add to an already long day out on the links. First round leader (Yamawaki) and first time Toyota Tour Cup member (Yang) felt they were having so much fun out there that they wanted to play a little longer as they were shuttled back to hole 18. Both scored a par-4 on the 18th and were once again carted back to the tee. Yamawaki found the water on his second and opened the door for Yang to capture his first TTC victory.
Congratulations, Alyaa and Alexander!
Rules Officials: Ron O’Connor, PGA, Keith Reinking, Gary Albin, Ron Riess, Tom Powers.
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