BMW final round to resume at 9AM ET Monday

BMW Championship
LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Jim Furyk will have another night to sleep on his 54-hole lead.

The final round of the BMW Championship was suspended for the day at 5 p.m. ET Sunday after heavy rains soaked Conway Farms and made the course unsuitable for play.

Play will resume at 9 a.m. ET Monday. Golf Channel will broadcast the final round live beginning at 10 a.m. ET.

“We’ve had a pretty trying day,” said PGA Tour rules official Slugger White. “We did everything we possibly could to get this thing in, but it just wasn’t going to happen, unfortunately.”

Only six of the 70 players in the field were able to complete all four rounds. Eleven groups have yet to tee off, including the final pairing of Jim Furyk and Steve Stricker. They will tee off at 10:40 a.m. ET, and, barring a playoff, should be finished by 3 p.m.

Photos: Wacky weather dominates 2013

“I guess there’s good and bad news,” said Furyk, who leads at 13-under 200. “The bad news, obviously, is I’m anxious to get out there and play, as is everyone else. But the good news is no one wants to go out and play in this and slop it around in bad weather on a golf course where we’re playing the ball down and it’s probably a little too wet out there.”

Officials said they were surprised by how much rain fell in the Chicago area. Initially, they anticipated about a half-inch of steady rain over a six-hour period; instead, more than an inch fell, and several holes had puddles in the fairways and on the greens.

Play was suspended for the first time at 11 a.m. ET but later resumed after a 3 1/2-hour delay. Players returned to the course, but only for 58 minutes before the horn blew again.

“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 for everybody, and cold weather and rain. I wish we could have got it in.”

White said the most problematic holes were the third green, as well as Nos. 9, 10 and 12.

“(The course) drains pretty well,” he said, “but Mother Nature just won’t give us a break here as far as shutting this faucet off.”

Monday’s forecast looks more promising – slight chance of scattered showers early, then clearing for mostly-cloudy skies and a high temperature of 64 degrees.