Waite, who finished second to Tiger Woods at last year's Canadian Open, was disqualified after he showed up six minutes late for his scheduled 7:29 a.m. EDT tee-off for the opening round at Royal Montreal Golf Club.
Players are assessed a two-stroke penalty if they are late. They are disqualified if they are more than five minutes late, a PGA Tour official said.
The official said Waite overslept and then encountered traffic en route to the course.
He left the course and was not available for comment, but fellow golfers empathized with Waite.
"Sometimes you trust hotels to wake you up, but sometimes it doesn't happen," said John Daly. "It's an honest mistake, but someone told me he almost missed one last week."
For most of his career, Daly was not an easy player to wake up. The big hitter battled the bottle for years, but said that "in all my drunken days on Tour, I never missed one (tee-off)."
Daly uses a cell phone, an alarm clock and the hotel's wake-up service to make sure he awakes on time -- safeguards that are less necessary now.
"I get up when I used to get in," he quipped.
Tiger Woods, an habitual early riser, said he doesn't trust hotels to wake him up. He uses "a couple of alarms" as back-ups.
Some blamed Waite's caddy, but Woods said it was "the player's responsibility to be there."
Woods almost missed a tee-off in the second round of last year's Canadian Open. He thought his tee-time was 8:45 a.m. when it was actually 7:45.
He was having breakfast in the clubhouse at Glen Abbey when a waitress reminded him.
"She said: Aren't you off in about 10 minutes?' " recalled Woods. "I said I'm off at 8:45 and she said `No, I think it's 7:45. I saw it in the paper.'
"So I said oh, OK. You guys never lie in the paper."
Woods made his starting time and went on to win the tournament. The waitress got a nice tip.
"I took care of her," he said. "That was awfully nice of her to do that.
"I think I went out and shot 65 or 64 that day."
The disqualification was a blow to Waite, who has a history of playing well in Canada.
Last year, Waite finished second at both the Air Canada Championship in Surrey, B.C., and at Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ont. -- two of his best Tour results since he won the Kemper Open in 1993.
He tied for eighth at the Air Canada event last week.
By Bill Beacon
