Widespread rain forces Wentworth Golf Club to postpone open tournament until December

Torrential rain throughout November has caused widespread damage at the course, with just eight of Wenty's 18 holes currently playable.

After drought hit in 2019 and the course's dam virtually ran dry, over 1000 millimetres of rain throughout 2020 filled it before even more rain in 2021 eventually caused it to spill.

This month's record rainfall - Orange's official weather station at the airport has recorded 224mm to date, which is the city's wettest November in 130 years of records - was the tipping point.

Wenty pro Todd Brakenridge said the course's weather station had over 200mm in its gauge this week alone.

And that deluge, on top of the tee-to-green irrigation being installed on course at the moment, has meant much of the course is unplayable.

And with further rain tipped for this weekend - there's 40mm on the radar across Saturday and Sunday - Brakenridge said postponing the event now, while far from ideal, was the right thing to do.

The Epiroc Wentworth Open was scheduled to be played on November 27 and 28. It'll now be played on December 18 and 19.

"We'll obviously need mother nature to come to the party even in December. There's plenty of rain forecast this week and the old boys keep telling us it'll be a wet summer," Brakenridge said.

He said more rain could force organisers to delay the tournament even further, but having this year's open in the next calendar year wasn't unprecedented.

The 2016 Wentworth Open was postponed and played in early 2017.

Brakenridge said a full field of around 220 golfers is on the cards for the event, and he expects that to be the case when the open tees off in December too.

The club now has around four weeks to get the condition of the course up to scratch.

"We've been lucky, everyone including our sponsors have been great. If we have to make another decision a bit later then we will," Brakenridge added.

Across at Duntryleague, its open tournament is on this weekend - November 20-21 - and pro Nathan King said it was "full steam ahead" even with more rain on the forecast.

Duntryleague's course was closed last Friday but was reopened for the Steve Conran Classic on Sunday.

There has been no carts on it this week, but King said carts will be permitted for the open.

"The course has held up fatalistically with the amount of rain we had at a short period of time. The green staff have done a great job," King said.

He said a full field of over 200 golfers would play in this weekend's open tournament - thunder and lightning will be the only thing to stop that.

"They'll play through the rain," he added.

At Blayney, rain impacted its open tournament over the weekend.

Like Wentworth, the club dam at Blayney overflowed and with so much surface water it was impossible to have the tournament go ahead on the club's nine-hole course.

Blayney Golf Club president Mick Miskell said the club recorded an incredible 250mm of rain in the 10 days leading into the open.

"We've had close to 10 inches in last week-and-a-half. It was way too wet," he said.

"On the bottom four holes, on Friday, there was probably two inches of water just sitting on the course."

The Blayney Open has been rescheduled until December 5.

"We were lucky Central West allowed us to do that," Miskell added.

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