SAN DIEGO — Friday started off with clear skies but within a few hours, the rain moved in over Torrey Pines Golf Course. By late afternoon, around 3 o'clock, enough came down to force a nearly hour-long delay in the 2nd round of the Farmers Insurance Open golf tournament.
Marty Gorsich is the CEO of the Century Club of San Diego, the charitable organization that runs the Farmers Insurance Open.
“It's always hard when it's the overnight pattern because you don't know what you're going to wake up to," Gorsich said.
The PGA tour provides its own meteorologist who has been tracking this storm closely as it approached from the west.
“He gives us regular updates and lets us know about conditions we need to be mindful of so we can plan not just day by day, but even hour by hour,” Gorsich said.
Light rain isn't usually enough to force a delay. But downpours, high winds and lightning are, which is why there are evacuation plans in place.
“So we have vans staged around, carts staged around, a whole plan in place where if we need to get the players off safely," Gorsich said. "But we have a lot of other people making this happen and we need to get them off safely as well."
Signs on the leader board warned players of the protocols.
Fortunately, aside from the rain delay, no emergency evacuations were needed as the weather held up enough to keep the tournament going.
At one point, a rainbow even shined through.
Gorsich said that aside from the safety measures, improvements to the course helped out as well.
“We had some projects here over the past couple of years really looking at how to improve the golf course and a big part of that was the drainage, and it's showed well over the last couple week,” Gorsich said.
The tournament is scheduled to end Sunday.