PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Well before daybreak on Thursday, Stewart Williams joined an urgent discussion in a small second-floor room at Oak Hill Country Club, near the nation’s northern border. The night had brought cool temperatures, clear skies and gentle winds — and that was a problem.
Frost was thickening on the golf course and, less than two hours before the P.G.A. Championship’s scheduled start, the tournament’s top official needed to know when it would melt. For the moment, one of the world’s most prestigious golf tournaments would be shaped not by the athletic genius of a Rahm or a Koepka or a McIlroy, but by the instincts and data of a meteorologist from High Point, N.