New York — Rain and the Bethpage Black Course go hand in hand when the world’s best players visit, so it was perhaps appropriate that the PGA Championship week started cold and soggy on a dreary Long Island on Monday. Tiger Woods, the 2002 US Open champion at Bethpage, was among those who braved the intermittent rain, the 15-times Major champion playing nine holes in the morning in temperatures more normal for March than late spring. But the course and driving range were all but deserted by mid-afternoon on an unusually quiet start to a championship that is beginning a new era after being played for nearly half a century in August. The expectation that it would be the first Major to feature all of the top 100 players in the world were dashed when No5 Justin Thomas withdrew, citing a lingering right wrist injury. The 2017 champion and former world No1 has been carrying the injury since March, when he injured the wrist striking a tree trunk on his follow-through with a swing. He could...
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