Hays Leads Senior Amateur Championship at 1-under 70

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.—The big news in the first round of the Tennessee Senior Amateur at Chattanooga Golf and Country Club on Tuesday didn’t have anything to do with birdies or bogeys.

No, the big news was the weather, which barged its way onto center stage with a monsoon that sent players scrambling and Tennessee Golf Association officials trying to batten down their scoreboards and tents.

Like the entire state of Tennessee, Chattanooga has been smothered in a broiler oven in August, a wicked combination of heat—the high has been 92 or above every day of the month and more than 100 from Aug. 7-23—and no rain.

Tuesday afternoon the weather relaxed its grip a bit when an industrial-strength storm blasted the course with an inch of driving rain—twice what it had received the entire month of August—and wind that knocked down three trees.

Play was suspended at 3:30 p.m. and didn’t resume until 6:15. The rain-soaked afternoon field played another couple of hours, but there were still 43 golfers on the course when darkness ended the proceedings at 8:05. They’ll finish their round starting at 7:45 Wednesday morning, after which regularly schedule tee times will begin.

Luckily for Wesley Hays, he had a morning tee time and was able to play, eat lunch and leave the course well before the rain hit. He departed with a smile on his face after a 1-under-par 70. That was one shot ahead of Chattanooga’s Coy Mabry—who, buoyed by a hole-in-one at the par-3 5^th hole, shot 71 and two strokes clear of Stephen Lightman of Memphis.

Hays owed it all to a missed 18-inch par putt on the par-3 9^th hole. Hays—how to put this nicely?—was less than pleased with what turned out to be a three-jack bogey that left him at 2-over-par for the day. He took out his anger on the golf course.

With birdies at No. 10, 12 and 18, Hays, who plays out of Chickasaw Country Club in Memphis, more than offset his front-nine bogeys and wound up as the only player all day to break par. Just like it was in the TGA’s Mid-Amateur a year ago, the old Chattanooga Golf and Country Club, its original Donald Ross-designed challenges recently restored by architect Bill Bergin, proved to be a stern test.

The average score of the morning round was 78.29.

Hays, who played in the Mid-Amateur, was oblivious to the struggles going on around him and actually found the course a bit easier than last year, a byproduct of the miserable summer.

“Obviously the tees are up a little bit,” Hays said. “And the greens aren’t as fast or as firm as last year, which is understandable because of the heat. The ball doesn’t run out as much. But the course is still a test. You’ve still got to hit it in the fairway.”

Hays didn’t have any trouble with that. At the par-4 No. 10 hole, he hit a utility club off the tee and an 8-iron to six feet and drained the birdie putt to earn back the stroke he lost at No. 9. At the 442-yard par-4 12^th, Hays hit a 5-iron approach to 15 feet and sank that putt for another birdie.

Hays couldn’t have known at the time how good that birdie was. The 12^th was a monster on Tuesday, playing nearly a full-stroke above par (4.98). Hays made the only birdie of the day. The hole extracted its revenge for that aberration with 34 bogeys, eight double-bogeys and four dreaded others in the morning round alone.

Hays had other birdie chances he couldn’t capitalize on the rest of the way, but he never came close to another bogey. He finished his round in style when he hit a 7-iron to tap-in range at the par-3 18^th and carded his third birdie of the back nine.

“I was just trying to get it on the green where I could two-putt and make par,” Hays said. “It just happened to get close.”

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