For This Weekend, His Name Is Mud

The alarm clock goes off early for Matt Morton, if you consider 3 a.m. early. By 3:30, Morton is on the job at Riviera Country Club, where he is course superintendent and the man responsible for making the place playable.

In other words, he has had the most miserable job this week at the waterlogged Nissan Open.

“It’s been incredibly tough,” he said.

If the bunkers are full of water, it’s up to Morton to empty them. If the fairways look like the Mississippi River, it’s in Morton’s hands. If the greens are lumpy, he has to smooth them out.

Morton and his staff have pumped water out of the sand traps, shoveled sand back onto the faces of the bunkers, squeegeed the greens and tried to keep laughing so they don’t start crying.

Morton, from Frederick, Md., has been in charge of Riviera’s grass and sand, whether dry or soggy, for seven years, but he has never seen the place take on as much water as it has this week.

His 17-hour days haven’t been easy, but Morton feels sorry not for himself, but for the fans.

“They expected to come to sunny Southern California for a week and they didn’t quite get that,” he said.

If he ever has time to write it, Morton’s memoirs might be good reading. He says the first chapter won’t be titled “Mud.”

No, it’ll be “Just When You Think You’ve Played Through Water.”

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-- Thomas Bonk