Weather is big winner
Rain pushes finish to Monday; leaders don’t even tee off
It was all going a little too smoothly.
Off to a great start with Jim Furyk’s historic 59, strong attendance and favorable weather, the BMW Championship at Conway Farms ground to a halt Sunday because of more than an inch of rain.
Play will resume at 8 a.m. Monday. The Golf Channel will begin its telecast at 9 a.m. and follow the tournament to its conclusion.
‘‘I guess there’s good and bad news,’’ said tournament leader Furyk, one of the 22 players unable to begin the final round. ‘‘The bad news, obviously, is I’m anxious to get out there and play, as is everyone else. The good news is, no one wants to go out and slop it around in bad weather.’’
Furyk, a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan, passed the time watching football.
‘‘There were a lot of good NFL games on today,’’ he said. ‘‘Being in Chicago, we had the Bears on, but we also had DirecTV and watched a lot of them on the iPad.’’
Furyk, whose 59 on Friday tied the record for a low round in a PGA tournament, will tee off at 9:40 a.m. with Steve Stricker, who is one shot back. Furyk (13 under par) and Stricker (12 under) are followed by Brandt Snedeker (11 under), Zach Johnson (10 under) and Tiger Woods (9 under).
Only six players in the 70-player field completed their rounds. With 42 players on the course and 22 yet to tee off, about six hours of golf remains, PGA rules official Slugger White said.
‘‘We’ve had a pretty trying day,’’ White said. ‘‘We did everything we could to get this thing in, but it just wasn’t going to happen.’’
The rain forced a 31⁄2-hour delay that began at 10 a.m. Play resumed for about an hour at 1:30 p.m. before another downpour and soggy course conditions chased golfers off the course to stay.
‘‘I think we got the better end of the deal by not even playing in it,’’ Stricker said. ‘‘It looked like it was pretty tough conditions, cold weather and rain. But I wish we could have gotten it in.’’
Rory McIlroy (3-under 68) posted the best score among the six players who finished. McIlroy is projected to be 50th in the FedEx Cup standings when the BMW wraps up, far below the top-30 requirement for players to reach the Tour Championship this week in Atlanta.
Dustin Johnson, who shot a 1-over 72 and is projected to finish 30th, won’t know whether he’s Atlanta-bound until the BMW is complete.
‘‘I’m not really going to watch it,’’ Johnson said. ‘‘Hopefully, I make it. If don’t, get ’em next time.’’
Johnson declined to link his bubble status to the weather.
‘‘It played tough this morning,’’ he said. ‘‘It was long, and it was raining all day. But I played pretty solid all week. Had a lot of good opportunities and just missed a lot of short putts.’’