A Delayed Start, Surprisingly Windy Conditions and an Elite Move From Stewart Cink Highlight Thursday at WM Phoenix Open

Ben Jared. Getty Images.

Mother Nature threw a wrench into golf's biggest party. Frigid morning temperatures delayed the start of the WM Phoenix Open by nearly two hours, which will put the PGA Tour up against the clock for the second week in a row. The good news: there's no rain (or hail) expected for the rest of the week, so we're unlikely to have a Monday finish like the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. But none of the afternoon wave completed their first rounds, and with limited daylight here in Arizona, a Saturday-morning cut is looking almost inevitable. 

Here, then, are some highlights from an incomplete first-round at TPC Scottsdale.

Xander Schauffele continues his heater

You likely haven't noticed because he's done so quietly—everything Xander Schauffele does, he does quietly—but the laidback Californian has been on a tremendous run of form for the better part of a year now. Since missing the cut at last year's Masters he's played in 15 events: three wins, five top-5s and just one finish worse than T-18. That ever-steady form continued on an unusually blustery day at TPC Scottsdale that saw scores come in much higher than usual. His four-under 67 had him one shot behind a pair of Canadians, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin, when the morning wave finished. 

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"You just don't expect it coming here," Schauffele said of the conditions. "It's Arizona, it's not Las Vegas where it blows every day…It was tricky. They moved one pin there on 15. It was a front left pin and it was blowing 30 left to right, so they moved that to the right. There were a few really hard ones. I'd say there's no great way to set the course up when you have a bunch of crosswinds coming across all these holes."

Tony Finau thought the pins were a bit more difficult for a Thursday than they've been in years past. "We see these locations on weekends, but not usually on Thursday," he told me after a one-under 70. "That one on 2 was impossible to get to. There were a few like that."

That's to be expected: this is now one of the tour's designated events, and the golf course flashed its teeth today.

A slow start for Mr. McIlroy…with some highlights

Put simply, it wasn't at all difficult to shoot an over-par score today. Rory McIlroy could only manage a two-over 73, his first over-par opening round since the Masters. 

"I felt like I hit it okay. It was hard, I've been struggling with the left miss a little bit, so last week I was doing a lot of sort of trying to clear my body and almost trying to just hit like little fades, and there was a ton of left to right winds out there today, so it really felt like my ball just going on those left to right winds pretty hard and just never really got a handle on it. Again, I felt like I played okay and swung it okay, just one of those days."

The round was not without Rory McIlroy moments, however, The first came after a massive block on the second hole, where his ball was lucky not to finish out of bounds. It was, however, damn near a boundary fence, yet he somehow managed to make clean contact and find a window in the trees to thread his approach onto the green and escape with par. 

On the fifth, he unleashed a low-spin stinger that ran for days and days and then ran some more. 

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His rival for the best-player-in-the-world title, Jon Rahm, was three under through 13 holes when play was suspended for darkness. Max Homa, making his first start since winning at Torrey Pines, was also three under through 12.

Stewart Cink, I just want to know how you made that happen

The WM Phoenix Open-Super Bowl double has the Phoenix-Scottsdale area feeling like the center of the sporting universe. Apparently the Suns were feeling a bit left out, for they traded for Kevin Durant before Thursday's hectic NBA trade deadline. How, then, did Stewart Cink manage to get his hands on a Kevin Durant Suns jersey in time to rock it at the iconic 16th hole?

That's a man who knows how to please a crowd. That probably shouldn't be a surprise; he turned pro 28 years ago. This is certainly not his first rodeo. 

I asked Cink how he managed to get his hands on what has to be the first Suns Durant jersey in existence. 

What a move.