Lightning strike injures spectators
US PGA Tour officials have been forced to explain why tee times were not adjusted to forecasted storms after a lightning strike led to the injuries of six people at East Lake Golf Club during round three at the Tour Championship yesterday.
At 4.45pm on Saturday (local time), two lightning strikes shook the Atlanta course – one hitting a tree beside the 16th hole at East Lake.
Debris falling from the tree injured four people, who were immediately treated by paramedics before two more people received attention. The injured people were transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital but PGA Tour officials stated the injuries were not life threatening.
Thunderstorms were forecast to hit Atlanta from 3pm on Saturday but third-round tee times for the 30-player tournament were not brought forward.
The final group teed off at 3.20pm on Saturday with play suspended at 4.17pm due to inclement weather.
Officials then suspended play for the rest of the day.
Mark Russell, a vicepresident of rules at the US PGA Tour, said moving up tee times was never a consideration because weather forecast only showed chance of ‘‘pop-up thunderstorms’’.
The TV broadcast window was 2.30pm to 7pm on American network NBC.
‘‘We had a situation where they were pop-up thunderstorms,’’ Russell said.
‘‘We have a meteorologist on staff with very sophisticated equipment; we can monitor that and a lot of times we get lucky and we don’t get hit with thunderstorms.’’
Russell was asked by a reporter if moving tee times forward would have been a better means of mitigating safety risks of bad weather, rather than ‘‘dealing with luck’’.
‘‘I think if we did that every time we had a possibility of thunderstorms in the southeast [of the US] we’d [have to] do that basically every time we played golf,’’ Russell said.
Tyler Dennis, a senior vicepresident of competitions for the PGA Tour, said: ‘‘We have a professional meteorologist that’s on site every week on all of our tours, forecasting the weather.
‘‘The safety that goes along with it . . . is critical to us. When it comes down to suspension of play . . . we don’t leave any room for error there. Safety is a huge priority for us.’’