Despite a threat of storms looming Thursday, Round 1 of the Dean & DeLuca Invitational at Fort Worth’s Colonial Country Club is expected to proceed as planned.
“We will not delay play for rain, unless there’s certain conditions on the golf course that happen because of rain,” Tournament Director Michael Tothe said. “What we are really looking at is electricity, lightning.”
Tothe and the PGA Tour officials on scene turn to Meteorologist Stewart Williams and his 20 years of forecasting for the tour for any questions regarding weather.
“Everybody asks, ‘How do we look today? How're we going to look today?’” Williams said about the constant questions he gets anytime weather could impact play.
“You know the tournament, this is their one week to shine. Their one week to make a lot of money and hopefully give a lot to charity,” Williams said. “You have weather obviously. When you do have weather you don’t want it to impact numbers. And so, hopefully, you want a dry week for them.”
Williams has multiple live radar systems on site, as well as a lightning detection system. He told NBC DFW he arrives at the course 90 minutes prior to the first tee time so he can begin to review weather data.
“It does look active,” Williams said about the atmosphere prior to the start of play on Thursday.
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Williams noted that unlike television meteorologists, who might have to forecast for an area hundreds of miles across, his area of concern is only about 2 square miles – the size of the golf course.
The Tournament Director Tothe said that the first concern regarding the weather is the safety of the players and the spectators on the course.
“You know it’s Texas, right? So it can kind of come and blow out," he said. "We’ve seen that before, so we won’t really make decisions until we absolutely have to."
