Ben Curtis, the British Open golf champion, is to marry his fiancée, Candace, on Saturday, and the only slight complication is that neither he nor anyone else has the faintest idea when the ceremony will take place.
Curtis, faced with the option of cancelling months of wedding planning in order to play in the $6-million NEC Invitational, could not decide. So he chose to play anyway and to get married anyway.
Ding-dong the bells are gonna chime all right, but it can hardly be in the morning, could be in the afternoon and is most likely to be in the evening, or even in the dead of night.
Curtis will play the third round of the tournament — there is no cut in the NEC — and, whenever he finishes, he will go off and get wed.
‘As far as I know,†he said, ‘it’s the only wedding of the day, so we won’t be holding anyone up.â€
But he will be asking an awful lot of guests, plus both sets of parents, the minister and, of course, his bride, to hang around all day long until he is done playing golf.
When that will be depends on how he plays on Thursday and Friday and the wedding is a powerful disincentive to play well on these two days.
If he scored well — a couple of 69s, say — he would be up among the leaders and have a late tee-time on Saturday.
The latest will be around 3.40pm, which would mean a finish around 8pm. And if he had played really well and was in contention, he would then be required for the interminable round of media interviews that go with being near, or in, the lead.
After all that it would be 9pm to 9.30pm and, unless he played in it, the tuxedo would still be on the peg. ‘Have you ever played in a tux?†he was asked. ‘No,†he said, ‘and I’m not going to.†—