The Punter's In-Play Blog: Rain delays Durban start

The heavily waterlogged Royal Durban Golf Course

The Nelson Mandela Championship has failed to start at waterlogged Royal Durban but there's good news in Thailand, where Steve's only pick, Charl Schwartzel, leads after day one...

10:35 - December 6, 2012

As you can see form the above picture, the Royal Durban Golf Course, this week's venue for the Nelson Mandela Championship, is not in a good way at all. Unseasonal heavy rains have soaked the golf course in the run-up to the event and a further downpour in the early hours put pay to any action there today. Day one has been abandoned completely and the tournament will now hopefully start tomorrow. 

Talking to Sky Sports, European Tour Tournament Director Mikael Eriksson said: "The fairways are very waterlogged and the course hasn't improved as much as we hoped it would overnight and further rain early this morning has put us back another few hours.

"The forecast wasn't bad at all for today and we hoped the course might have dried out a little bit more but it hasn't actually. We tried early this morning to shorten the golf course - made a couple of par fours into par threes, one par five into a par three as well - in an attempt to start, but with the additional rain as we were trying to restart it didn't work.

"The good scenario is that we start at 0630 on Friday morning, we play the first round tomorrow, the second on Saturday, have a cut and then go from there. We are still hoping to get 72 holes in.

"The tees and greens are not a problem, they are fine, it's the fairways and rough that are bad. I'm hoping the sun is going to come out but there could be some more rain on the way this afternoon."

It's great that Mr Eriksson sounds reasonably confident but the course looks in a very bad way to me and anymore rain could put the whole event in jeopardy. Four rounds is surely a big doubt now.

It's not an ideal start to the 2013 European Tour and if Gregory Havret's tweet is anything to go by the players are feeling very fed-up. "No play in Durban today, it's not even raining but course is in very bad conditions. Looooong waiting week."

At least there was live golf to watch this morning though, as Sky Sports sensibly stayed with round one of the Thailand Golf Championship, where my sole selection, Charl Schwartzel, leads after round one. 

When interviewed after his round, Schwartzel put his success down to finding fairways and having watched both Sergio Garcia and Hunter Mahan struggle to extricate themselves from the thick rough that certainly looked the case.

It appeared for much of the morning as though Sergio Garcia would end the day as Schwartzel's main challenger but he endured a poor finish, with his birdie at the 15th hole, sandwiched between a bogey at the 14th and a double-bogey at the 16th hole, the only bright spot. He ended the day on -3 and trails by four.

Thailand's Thitphun Chuayprakong, matched at 1000.0n/a before the off and still available at 65.064/1, sits in second place, one behind Schwartzel on -7, with Spain's Javi Colomo and Sweden's Daniel Chopra tied for third on -5. 

Bubba Watson, on -4, is the first of the 'names' chasing my man and he has to rate a huge danger. After a slow start, pre-event favourite and defending champ, Lee Westwood, looked to be getting into gear when he eagled the 15th, so I was quite relieved to see him bogey the last to end the day on -2.

If they were to call off the Nelson Mandela, I'd be tempted to lay my stakes back on Schwartzel at 3.02/1 and take the rest of the week off but for now I'm going to wait and see what happens. He doesn't tee-off tomorrow until 5.00am UK time, so I may get to see how he's playing on TV first. 

I haven't had a bet at the Australian Open, as the early start caught me out! I was going to follow Paul Krishnamurty in on Nick O'Hern but he trails first round leader, John Senden, by fully five shots so I've no regrets on that score but I should've followed his advice regarding Senden, who is now a heavy odds-on to secure the advised top-ten finish.

Nelson Mandela Championship Pre-Event Selections:
Tim Clark @ 21.020/1
Kristoffer Broberg @ 60.059/1
Steve Webster @ 170.0169/1
Bryce Easton @ 300.0299/1

Thailand Golf Championship Pre-Event Selection:
Charl Schwartzel @ 7.26/1

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