In Walker, PGA has a new raining champion

SPRINGFIELD, N.J. - In more than a quarter-century of covering major golf tournaments, I've experienced my share of, shall we say, different kinds of days.

Sunday at Baltusol had to be right up there in any number of ways, not the least of which was that the PGA Championship actually finished on time when a lot of folks, including Jordan Spieth, were suggesting that we might all still be here until maybe Tuesday. He didn't specify which week.

I was at Muirfield on Saturday of the 2002 British Open, when the "filthy" stuff, as they call it in those parts, blew in. Just like that, they were playing in conditions that would have made Noah start collecting wood. Tiger Woods had shot 81, which wasn't even the worst score of the third round, to derail his grand-slam chances in what many still feel might have been the worst weather ever. Naturally he would close with a 65 in pristine sunshine.

I was at St. Andrews last summer, when the winds blew so hard on Saturday that the course became unplayable, which meant the British would end on a Monday for the first time in forever. So some 50,000 fans with suddenly nothing else to do descended on the town. And the famed Dunvegan bar just up the street from the 18th green eventually allegedly ran out of beer and closed early, both of which, of course, are impossible in Scotland.

There were others, mostly on this side of the Atlantic. Like Tiger Woods winning his 14th - and last, so far - major on one leg over 91 holes. And Phil Mickelson, Colin Montgomerie, Jim Furyk and Padraig Harrington all blowing a U.S. Open that went instead to Geoff Ogilvy. Geoff Ogilvy? How about having O.J. Simpson and his white Bronco chase/non-guilty plea infringe twice on the 1994 Open, even pre-empting Loren Roberts' short putt that would have won the Monday playoff.

These things don't always proceed as planned, especially when Mother Nature enters into the equation. But the last thing anyone wants is to stick around past Sunday - particularly the television network airing the event.

In hindsight, which is always an easy game to play, the PGA of America might have made a mistake by not sending groups out in threesomes early on Saturday off the first and 10th holes to try to avoid the weather pattern that arrived around midafternoon and wound up suspending play for the remainder of the day. Which meant that the continuation of the third round began at 7 a.m. Sunday, with the final 18 holes getting underway an hour and 40 minutes later. So when was the last time that happened, major or not?

Even then, the prospects weren't promising. Neither was the forecast for Monday. Yet somehow it didn't matter, even though a bunch of fellows were forced to play 36 holes in less than 12 hours. Some took a nap, and showered, between their rounds.

For what was believed to be the first time in any major, the decision was made to allow the players to get preferred lies on any closely mowed area through the green in the fourth round. So they could lift, clean and replace their ball without penalty. Or, as former USGA rules official Tom Meeks once said: "Lift, clean and cheat."

Hey, sometimes you do whatever you have to, in the name of common sense, major or not.

There was no re-pairing after the third round. Neither could the greens be mowed and/or rolled. So they were unusually slow for a major Sunday. I also can never remember so many people spending so much time checking their phones to see what the weather maps said was headed in our direction. And, as was the case Saturday, the projections got it wrong again. Thankfully, for a change.

I'm guessing the ratings aren't as good on a Monday morning, though they might still have been better than the Saturday replay of the 2015 PGA, which some viewers apparently thought was the real thing. Funny, I don't remember Lake Michigan being on the East Coast.

When it was finally over, and a sliver of sun had even made a brief appearance, what were we left with?

We could have had world No. 1 Jason Day becoming the only player other than Tiger to win back-to-back PGAs since it switched from match to stroke play in 1958.

We could have had Henrik Stenson, who won the British Open two weeks ago by closing with a 63 to shoot 20-under par for his first major, becoming the only golfer other than Ben Hogan (in 1953) to win consecutive majors after the age of 40. And only the fourth over-40 player to win two majors in the same season, joining Jack Nicklaus (1980) and Mark O'Meara (1998).

What we did get was someone who, at 37, had never led a major but was in front the whole way this week in Texan Jimmy Walker, who went 188 events before he got his first victory in 2013 and then won two of the next seven. In becoming the fifth straight first-time major winner, the 48th-ranked golfer in the world won for the first time east of Texas (and sixth time overall, but first in 14 months). Did we mention that he had missed the cut in the last two majors, and three of the last four? Or that he'd never had a bogey-free round in a major until this final round?

It doesn't have to compute. It was his time, like when he holed out at No. 10 from the bunker for his first birdie of the round. And that's always enough, even if Walker did make it more interesting than it had to be - after Day had finished with an eagle just ahead of him - by hitting his second shot - a fairway wood instead of the safe play, an iron lay-up - to the par-5 18th into the greenside rough and then having to sink a 3-footer for par to avoid a three-hole playoff. Or maybe that's how it was supposed to play out, given everything else that had gone down before.

We'll never know what might have happened, had the PGA been played two weeks from now as would have been had the sport not been brought back into the Olympics for the first time since 1904. We only know what did. And on the final nine, it turned into pretty stout stuff. Which in another decade is hopefully what we'll mostly remember.

This was supposed to be the season when Day, Jordan Spieth and/or Rory McIlroy were going to add to their respective major totals. Spieth should have won the Masters, then wasn't a factor in the next three. McIlroy missed the cut here, as he had at the U.S. Open. Ditto Dustin Johnson, who won his first major at the U.S. Open and had finished in the top 10 in eight of the last nine majors. We won't even get into Sergio Garcia.

Maybe next year, it will go more according to plan. But like Stenson and Johnson, Walker was a good story: his hobby is astrophotography, and his caddie once competed against him but had to give up the game because he suffers from multiple sclerosis. No need to apologize for not being a household name.

That will have to do until we get back to the Masters in nine months.

For now, at least everyone got to depart on schedule. In a day of upsets, that was probably the biggest.

@mikekerndn