US Tour: Philip Reid reports on the knock-on effects of Hurricane Jeanne for the Mount Juliet organisers.
One message after another, the bush telegraph brought unwanted news. First, that John Daly - a foot injury, apparently - had been forced to withdraw from the $7 million WGC-American Express Championship, and then that Mike Weir - the world number seven - had also defaulted, due to illness.
Then, as dusk prepared to descend on Mount Juliet last evening, the most devastating information of all: Vijay Singh, seemingly invincible these days and the undisputed world number one, had withdrawn because of the impact of Hurricane Jeanne on his home in Florida.
After winning the 84 Lumber Classic on Sunday evening, his eighth win of the season on the US Tour, the 41-year-old Fijian decided against boarding a private charter to Ireland in order to return home to his family in Ponte Vedra Beach, where he discovered his wife, Ardena, and teenage son, Qass, in some distress. The excesses of the hurricane had left the salubrious home flooded and without power and left Singh - who plays more tournaments than any other top player - with no option other than to contact the tournament organisers with his decision to pull out.
"I couldn't get home (to Florida) on Sunday night and, when I did eventually get back to Ponte Vedra, I discovered there was no power or water services in the house. I couldn't leave my family under those circumstances and, frankly, I'd no chance to get to Mount Juliet in time for the tournament," said Singh.
Singh's defection is a real hammer-blow to the AmEx event, especially since Phil Mickelson, another top draw, was forced out last week, citing "personal reasons."
Daly played in the Lumber Classic in Pennsylvania but then complained of a foot injury and was advised to rest, while Weir, the winner of the AmEx at Valderrama in 2000, was unable to travel due to his illness.
But Singh's absence will be the most felt. Since usurping Tiger Woods as world number one earlier this month, Singh has consolidated that position. He is now two clear points ahead of his nearest rival in the world rankings. And the Pacific Islander's win in the Lumber brought his haul on the US Tour so far this season to $9,455,566 (in 26 events), breaking the record of $9,188,321 (in 20 tournaments) posted by Woods in 2000, when he won three majors. His next objective is to break the magical $10-million-in-a-season barrier.
"I'm going to try," he said. "I want to win, (and) I want to play well. It's a good habit to get into."
Unfortunately for him, and the spectators at the Thomastown estate, that won't happen this week.
Singh's winning habit of recent months is extraordinary by any standards. After initially cutting his professional teeth on the Asian circuit, and then on the PGA European Tour, it took some time for him to conquer the US Tour. In fact, he didn't win there until he was 30 years old.
But now he has accumulated 23 titles Stateside - and 12 of those have come in the last year. Better than that, he has won five of his last six tournaments (including the US PGA championship), and the victory in the Lumber was his third in a row, coming on top of the Deutsche Bank and the Canadian Open.
Clearly, he was the in-form player coming into the strokeplay championship at Mount Juliet, but his absence will open the event to the rest of the field (now down to 68 players).
Such glory days for Singh are a long way from his time spent in the Borneo jungle as a fledgling professional, when he gave lessons and beat balls under a merciless sun at a time he was unable to play tournament golf due to serving a suspension on the Asian Tour for allegedly submitting a wrong score.
That misdemeanour is history and while, to this day, Singh protests his innocence and that he was the injured party, his rise to world number one has been an evolution of hard graft and dedication as much as natural ability.
"Vijay is driven to do one thing and that is to play golf the best anybody has ever played it, or at least the best he can play," said Paul Tesori, Singh's former caddie.
Once you study Singh's life story, you understand why he's so driven. He grew up on Fiji, where his father was an airplane mechanic who also taught golf. Singh didn't have access to good equipment or manicured courses and wasn't exposed to a competitive environment as a junior or amateur.
He was as far away from the good life of professional golf as a man could be.
"I didn't know what the hell I was doing, didn't really know my swing, until I was 27 or 28, maybe even 30," he said.
The fear of losing it all - his swing, his status, his lifestyle - is what drives him. The more success he has, the harder he seems to work.
"I swing a golf club every day just to make sure my swing is still there," Singh said in a revealing interview before the US Open in June. "I don't want to lose my swing. I don't want to wake up and say, 'How am I supposed to play this game?' There are a lot of guys who have done it in the past and they've never come out of it.
"At my age, I don't have more than five or six years to play at the level I'm at now. If I can maintain that and keep doing what I'm doing, I don't have to fear anything."
In truth, Singh's public image doesn't have the same charisma as that of Woods or Mickelson or Sergio Garcia or, for that matter, on this side of the Atlantic, Padraig Harrington or Darren Clarke. It wasn't helped last year when Singh felt burned by the media after he made some ill-advised comments about Annika Sorenstam playing in the MasterCard Colonial on a sponsor's exemption. Widely quoted as saying, "I hope she misses the cut," Singh was upset that the first part of the sentence - "If I miss the cut" - went largely unreported.
At the US Masters this year, Singh hinted he was ready to mend some fences.
"I'm more relaxed," he said, "and you'll probably see the calmer side of me."
Still, his availability to the media is generally on his terms - and, more often than not, he has done his talking on the course, where he has racked up titles and prizemoney with relentless monotony in recent months.
But where fellow-professionals have failed to stop him, Mother Nature has managed. The effect of Hurricane Jeanne on the Singh home in Ponte Vedra is that he has made the understandable decision to be with his family rather than chase another title. That can wait for another day.
Serial winners
Most victories in a season on the US PGA Tour:
18 - Byron Nelson 1945
13 - Ben Hogan 1946
11 - Sam Snead 1950
10 - Ben Hogan 1948
9 - Tiger Woods 2000
8 - Horton Smith 1929; Gene Sarazen, 1930; Sam Snead, 1938; Byron Nelson, 1944; Arnold Palmer, 1960; Arnold Palmer, 1962; Johnny Miller, 1974; Tiger Woods, 1999; Vijay Singh, 2004
