Golf | BMW's 1st round delayed by rain

ST. LOUIS — When the fans came out to watch Tiger Woods, there was no tournament. Arnold Palmer once played in a tournament, but fans couldn't get to the golf course.

St. Louis added yet another chapter to its dreary decade of golf history when the first round of the BMW Championship was washed out by storms that dumped 3 inches of rain on Bellerive Country Club.

"We do know how to deal with adversity," said Jerry Ritter, the general chairman of the BMW Championship and a Bellerive member who has seen his share of it.

Dozens of players were at Bellerive getting ready for the American Express Championship the morning of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It was the first big event in St. Louis since the 1992 PGA Championship. Woods was playing in St. Louis for the first time in his career, but he only got in a practice round before the event was canceled.

Three years later, the U.S. Senior Open came to town, and rain washed out the second round Friday. At least they got in the tournament, with Peter Jacobsen going 36 holes on a creaky hip Sunday to win.

Palmer made his only appearance in the Boone Valley Classic on the Senior PGA Tour in 2000, and the King can draw a big gallery anywhere. But storms that week caused such a problem with traffic that fans couldn't get to Boone Valley.

And it's not like the BMW Championship, the third stop in the PGA Tour Playoffs for the FedEx Cup, is a complete wash. The first round was postponed until today, with 36 holes on Saturday to get back on schedule.

The rain relented Thursday afternoon, giving tournament crews about 18 hours to get the course ready. It helps that Bellerive recently installed a new drainage system, which couldn't stop the downpour.

"It's under water," said Slugger White, vice president of rules and competition for the PGA Tour. "It's as bad as I've seen in a long time."

The BMW Championship is the third event in the PGA Tour Playoffs for the FedEx Cup, with Vijay Singh holding such a large lead that he could wrap up the title before the season-ending Tour Championship.

Singh won the first two events at The Barclays and Deutsche Bank Championship.

Ritter said the tournament would honor Thursday tickets on the weekend, where the gallery was expected to top 35,000 people. He said ticket sales had been slightly short of a sellout, but that was due to another dose of bad news that St. Louis can't seem to escape.

Just as excitement was starting to build this summer, Woods announced he was having season-ending knee surgery.

Other tournament

• Teenager Rory McIlroy shot an 8-under 63 to take the lead after the first round of the European Masters in Crans-Sur-Sierre, Switzerland. The 19-year-old Northern Irishman had missed cuts during the last three weeks.

Notes

• A California state senator is seeking a legal opinion to determine whether the LPGA Tour's language requirement for players violates state or federal law.

Sen. Leland Yee is upset about a policy that requires players to speak English starting in 2009. Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, says the rule might violate California laws covering workplace discrimination or disabilities.

• Annika Sorenstam will play her last tournament in Europe this weekend at the Nykredit Masters in Helsingoer, Denmark. The second-ranked Swede will retire at the end of the season.