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Crowd lighter early; crunch could come this afternoon

Journal photo / Kathy Borchers
Earlier arrivers Abby Mastriano and Joe Neri, both from South Winsor, Conn., take a nap around noon today after lunch. They got up around 4 a.m. to see today's action.

What's a fan to do?

Because of the double round today, it meant there would be about 13 hours of golf to be played. That's too much for most. So, do you arrive early and leave early? Or arrive later and hope to stay around for the finish even it does mean staying until close to dark?

Apparently, people are split, which is why there are good crowds here this morning, but no one is crowded in.

``It's been steady,'' Joe Butz, the tournanment director said just before noon. ``I think it will be more of a late arriving crowd, which is not unusual for a Sunday and especially in this case with the 36 holes.''

Indeed, the traffic in downtown Newport around 11 a.m. was much heavier today than yesterday, and there were groups of people waiting to be picked up at shuttle bus stops around the downtown. So that could be our late-arriving crowd right there.

The USGA estimates yesterday's crowd at 19,980.

- Paul Kenyon and Mike McDermott

Posted by Mike McDermott  at 12:07 PM | Permalink

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