Gary Newkirk, Tiger Woods Foundation
It was a day virtually without equal in professional golf, a tournament round played without hardly a spectator on a course that had been whipped by a storm that carried 70 mph winds for 30 minutes.
The third round of the AT&T National was completed Saturday, less than 24 hours after a violent storm swept across Congressional Country Club, blowing down 40 trees and leaving much of Bethesda, Md., including the club, without power.
Conditions were so bad that tournament officials closed the course to the public, leaving fans with little contact other than internet and CBS Sports.
So, with virtually no one to applaud and cheer good shots, or groan about the bad ones, Brendon de Jonge shot 69 to finish 7-under par and take the lead going into Sunday's final round.
Tiger Woods, the tournament founder, shot 67, his best round of the tournament, to fall into a group of three golfers, one stroke off the lead at 6-under par.
"I needed to make a run," said Woods, who started five strokes out of the lead. "Whether you have hundreds of people or one person watching it doesn't change the execution of the shot."
He said the atmosphere was similar to a rain delay, where the players are called back on the course late in the day after most of the fans have gone home.
"I just wanted to play a Saturday round and put myself in contention," he said.
Woods said he heard the storm at his hotel during the night, and got a 4 a.m. call from a member of his staff, telling him of the damage to the course.
"It's amazing that we got the round in," said Woods. "It's a tribute to the staff and the volunteers who worked so hard to get us out there."
The conditions left a lot of questions to be answered and problems to be solved. One of the most unique: What to do with the food that had been prepared to feed thousands of spectators.
The answer was a donation to Shepherds Table, a charity in Silver Spring, Md., that serves the homeless.
Scott Egloff, a member of the board of directors at Shepherds Table, said his organization became connected to Congressional Country Club a year ago when it hosted the U.S. Open. Afterward, personal items were donated to the homeless served by the charity.
This year the donation was food: 100 pounds of turkey; 50 pounds of beef; 40 pounds of ham; 150 pounds of pork loin; 70 dozen dinner rolls and 1,000 servings of cobbler. The food came from Prom Catering, a company that has worked with the AT&T National since its inception in 2007, and Ruth's Chris Steak House, which has a food court at Congressional for the AT&T National.
