At the Arnold Palmer, the biggest challenge is a matter of life and death

Shane Lowry looked at his caddie, Darren Reynolds, and laughed.

For the better part of the last five hours, Lowry had battled Bay Hill, and now — on his walk up the 18th fairway — the battle was over. In the bout between the burly, rugged golfer whose game could be described similarly, and Saturday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational? Arnie won in a knockout.

“Better day tomorrow,” Lowry said as he peeked at the scoreboard, which had once shown his name in the lead, but now flashed to reveal Lowry six shots behind Collin Morikawa.

Lowry was not alone in his moving day tumble at Bay Hill. In fact, he was quite the norm on Saturday — an afternoon in which one of the stiffest challenges on the PGA Tour bore all its teeth. If the typical soundtrack of PGA Tour golf is a symphony of ovations, Saturday at the Arnold Palmer could best be described by its chorus of groans. Those who attended in the afternoon elicited an array of pained whimpers as the best players in the world battled almost cartoonish conditions: rough that began this week at four inches high and has remained unmowed, fairways painted like a checkerboard between bouncy and soft landing areas, and — as nearly every player attested — putting greens that might well be cement.

“If they have a media day here on Monday it’s going to be carnage,” said Bones Mackay. “It’s wicked fast.”

Officially, Mackay’s NBC teammate Kevin Kisner reported, they were rolling at a 13 on the stimpmeter, which makes them fast and firm by PGA Tour standards. But by the time the leaders came around in the afternoon, the speed and rigidity of the greens at Bay Hill had clearly changed. The best golfers in the world were not just missing putts, they were struggling to keep them within the general proximity of the hole.

“You get on these greens and they’re slippery,” said Morikawa, owner of a Saturday 67, the second-best round of the day. “I think just because there’s no friction on the greens, right? They’re so fast that you’re hitting it even softer than you normally would, so it’s just a very different way of playing.”

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Morikawa (10 under) was one of the few golfers in the final groups on Saturday who survived unscathed. Lowry and his buddy Rory McIlroy each recorded scores over par to fade from “in the hunt” to merely lurking, while reigning champion Scottie Scheffler and fellow contender Wyndham Clark saw their tournament chances evaporate like the final drops of humidity in those greens, which had oxidated into a greenish-brown by the end of play.

It seems trivial to speak about the physical appearance of a putting surface in attempting to understand a golf tournament, but in this instance it is warranted. While most weeks on the Tour are defined by lush, receptive surfaces that let players chase pins like darts into cork, the “greens” on Saturday at the Arnold Palmer were defined by a much different set of physical characteristics.

“They are glassy,” Jason Day said. “Any time you put your putter down and you start sliding on your putter … that’s when you know the greens are getting pretty slick. They’re changing color, and you can kind of start to see the change in color.”

A lighter hue and a glossier surface helped to turn Bay Hill into what Keegan Bradley termed the “toughest test” of the PGA Tour season. But more than the challenge is the prevailing sense that the greens might be an issue much larger than physical appearance. According to at least one player, they were teetering into an earnest matter of life and death.

“These greens are pretty crazy, they are crusty,” said Michael Kim. “I don’t know, I feel like 10 green might be dead. The fertilizer’s the only thing that’s keeping it alive. But barely.”

Most in the field are praying there is enough fertilizer left in the tank to survive through Sunday afternoon. Particularly Morikawa, who is hoping to end a lengthy winless streak at a tournament that would button up a tidy (and growing) PGA Tour resume as he enters his age 28 season.

A cardigan awaits Morikawa on the other side of a terrifying Sunday at Bay Hill, but that’s just it: Sunday will be the stiffest test of all. The wind is once again expected to pick up as the leaders close in on the final round. Can a golf course already on the brink survive an added challenge? That’s the question on everyone’s mind on Saturday evening, but contrary to Lowry on the 18th, hopes aren’t high.

“With all the sun out there, it’s just going to get worse,” Morikawa said.