Buick Invitational round three: Tiger Woods is singing in the rain

It’s raining, the wind’s already up around 20mph, and it’s not yet dawn. There’s plenty more rain on the way - up to two inches we’re told - plus some hail, we could see lightning too, and the wind’ll likely gust anywhere up to 40mph. It’s not the way I remember California.

So heaven knows when we’ll finish this one, if at all. Which is a pity considering it is effectively already finished. You can lump all your money, your house, your car, yacht, life insurance on Tiger Woods if they’ll let you, although at 1.01 on the exchange and 1.005 from the bookies it hardly seems worth the effort (or tiny risk).

Judging by the returns so far, there’s not a lot of interest in the ‘Winner without Woods’ market as an alternative, where Stewart Cink is the clear favourite at just under evens. Given the unpredictability of the proceedings, including pressure on players to hurry up and get the job done, you might think him worth taking on. There’s a number of useful looking players within five shots, down to Phil Mickelson finally starting to find some rhythm. Boo Weekley had his bad round Saturday and has already gone low here, while Justin Leonard has made a startling comeback from his poor opening round. Trouble is, if the weather is so bad they can’t finish, Cink’s the winner however good the opposition is.

I imagine the person most irked by the potential delays is Tiger, who has to cross the Pond for next week’s event in Dubai. This is a disappointingly soggy end to his equalling of Arnold Palmer’s PGA victories, but the golf he has served up to do it is certainly worthy of the milestone. Looking at the bare stats you see that his putting and iron work have been outstanding. But Cink makes the point that, despite what Tiger says, his driving is not as bad as the stats might suggest. “If he’s out of the fairway, he’s just a few steps. Very rare any more that he’s way off the mark like we saw a few years ago.”

What is so incredible about Tiger is that even when his game does let him down a bit, he has the talent to get himself out of trouble, to the point where he has only made one bogey in three rounds this week. I wonder, though whether he will have it quite his own way when he tees it up, a little jet-lagged, against the rampant European Tour golfers.