Rain Forces Open to Shut Down Early

Play Is Suspended in Round 1; Weather Could Extend Event

FARMINGDALE, N.Y., June 18 -- Of all the odd instruments used to aid a professional golfer -- woods and irons, wedges and putters -- the squeegee was never meant to be included. Cleaning the windshield at a traffic light in Manhattan, sure. But here, Thursday morning, was Tiger Woods, standing over a putt on the second green in the opening round of the U.S. Open, asking a course maintenance worker to please, pretty please, use an oversized rubber broom to clear the water so he might roll his putt to the hole without it drowning.

That was just before 8:30 a.m., nearly two hours before the Open was suspended on the waterlogged Black Course at Bethpage State Park, with players marking their balls and heading for the most valuable commodity of the day: cover. Four hours hence, with what became more than an inch of rain still pouring down, officials from the United States Golf Association called off play for the day, began hoping against hope for conditions that would allow them to dry out the course and warned of a championship that could be staged in fits and starts, ultimately ending sometime next week.

Get out the radar and start looking for some holes in the massive swaths of green covering metropolitan New York. It's tough to find any.

"Saturday does not look good," said Jim Hyler, the chair of the USGA's championship committee. "Then there's a possibility of more rain . . . Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of next week. There's a low-pressure area that's just sitting here, and it's dumping right on the western end of Long Island."

And, therefore, all over Bethpage Black -- and by extension, the Open. Thus, Hyler and Mike Davis, the USGA's senior director of rules and competitions, became the central figures in the tournament, at least for the moment seizing the stage from a 156-player field that includes Woods -- the defending champion, who stood at 1 over par through six holes -- and Phil Mickelson, the New York fan favorite who was among 78 players who didn't hit a single shot Thursday.

The man who might have been the focus had play continued was a 46-year-old Californian named Jeff Brehaut, who plays on the minor league Nationwide Tour and managed to get in 11 holes Thursday. That he did so at 1 under -- tying him for what amounts to the lead with Johan Edfors of Sweden, Andrew Parr of Canada and Ryan Spears of Oklahoma, none of whom had played more than four holes -- was perhaps the most significant on-course accomplishment of the day.

"This is a bit overwhelming," said Brehaut, in the odd position of sleeping on an Open lead with seven holes to play in his first round.

Whether he gets a chance to play those seven holes Friday is, too, an unknown. The logistics -- and there is no more important, and no more fluid, element for the Open now -- will work something like this: The first round is due to resume at 7:30 a.m. Friday, with players returning to the spots on the course they abandoned Thursday, something of a shotgun start. The half of the field that had tee times scheduled for Thursday afternoon will begin its first round at 10 a.m., and the second round will begin at 4 p.m.

But there are a lot of "ifs" involved.

"If it continues to be the way it is now, it could even be tough to get back on at 7:30 tomorrow morning," said Steve Stricker, who made it through six holes at 1 over.

That, then, could be a problem. What if the tournament gets backed up further? Though Friday should be a "decent day," Hyler said, the USGA's meteorologists are forecasting another inch of rain Saturday. That leaves the distinct possibility that even the second round could spill into Sunday, when the final round is scheduled.

"An ideal goal would be to get Round 2 finished by Saturday," Davis said. "But based on that weather forecast, that's not looking terribly promising."

USGA and Bethpage officials had worried all week about this scenario. New York has had an exceptionally rainy spring, and Bethpage Black has taken on as much water as it can handle. Within 20 minutes of the suspension of play, the second green was almost entirely submerged. Squeegees had been used on every hole on the course, with players allowed to ask workers to sweep the line of their putt, so long as they continued three feet beyond the hole. But with the rain continuing to pour, the suspension was an easy choice.

"The volume of rain falling was outpacing our ability to squeegee the greens," Hyler said. "That's the bottom line."

Even though it was raining when the first groups teed off at 7 a.m., players endorsed the decision to try to get some golf in. "Playing was the right decision," Woods said. The rain, of course, is already making the behemoth Bethpage Black longer, but the notion that the tournament could be played over five or six days -- and that it might be hard to string together 18 holes without a break -- adds a new element to the competition.

"It's going to be the guy who keeps his head this week," said Paul Casey of England, the world's third-ranked player. "Patience is paramount, and you are going to have to deal with not only a very tough golf course, but also some decisions that are being made, like not being able to lift, clean and place. That's going to be very difficult."

The USGA is adamant that regardless of how wet it gets, players will not be allowed to lift, clean and reposition their balls in the fairway, as they would do on the PGA Tour under such sloppy conditions. Yet at 10:15 a.m. Thursday morning, that's exactly what they did: Each player picked up his ball, put it away and walked off the course, unsure exactly when he would return.