No Rain, and Little Clarity

Several Unlikely Stars Shine During Break in Weather, but Woods Slogs

FARMINGDALE, N.Y., June 19 -- For 13 hours Friday, Bethpage State Park's Black Course hosted golf, about the kind of run a municipal course should endure on a pleasant enough June day, particularly when the locals have endured a month of rain that seems downright relentless. But during all that golf, only the following was sorted out about the U.S. Open: The second round is still to be completed, Mike Weir nearly set the record for the low round in a major championship, and a 29-year-old South Carolinian named Lucas Glover went to bed with the lead.

"I'm tired, I'm hungry and I'm sleepy," Glover said.

Which, given the circumstances, made sense. Such a day was necessary because of Thursday's torrential rains, which allowed less than three hours of play in what was supposed to be the opening round. With more rain forecast for Saturday, Friday provided perhaps the best window the tournament will see.

Still, the leader board, at the end of this slog, looked rather bland -- with Glover at 6 under par, leading 28-year-old Californian Ricky Barnes by a shot. Swede Peter Hanson, who needed a hole-in-one in a qualifying tournament in London even to be here, was two back, as was Weir, the 2003 Masters champion.

That snapshot -- taken in the middle of the second round -- doesn't account for the number of characters who popped up over this marathon. Play was finally suspended at 8:24 p.m., but not before a litany of potential weekend story lines -- some involving compelling figures, others involving Bethpage Black itself -- surfaced.

Tiger Woods was right there for a bit, even par through 14 holes in the morning, and then finished his first round with, in order, double bogey, bogey, par and bogey to shoot a disappointing 74. Woods's unlikely adversary in last year's enthralling 91-hole Open at Torrey Pines, Rocco Mediate, flashed himself into contention with an opening 68, but then played his first six holes in the evening at 4 over to stumble back.

But as much as the galleries yelled "Roc-co!" -- "About 4 million times," Mediate said -- survey the fans at Bethpage Black, and there is a clear favorite. Phil Mickelson, the runner-up to Woods here in 2002, was a New York darling even before he became a sympathetic figure when his wife, Amy, had breast cancer diagnosed last month. He got to 4 under during his first round, ended up with a 69, then overcame some yippy putting and a double bogey to remain at 1 under through 11 holes of his second round -- the galleries in his ear the entire way.

"It's hard to miss it," Mickelson said. "It's not like they whisper it. It's very flattering. It's very cool."

There, then, are some of the most alluring names the field had to offer. And that cast does not even begin to deal with David Duval. A decade ago, he was the No. 1 player in the world. He arrived here ranked 882nd. He did not qualify for the past two U.S. Opens, and he is only now shaking off a decade of mental and physical deterioration. The unexpected outcome: a first-round 67 that had him right in contention, then 12 holes in the evening that left him a 1 under, five back of Glover.

"I feel comfortable with what I'm doing, and I feel confident in what I'm doing," Duval said between rounds. "Confidence has been lacking for me for a while, and toward the end of [February], I started to gain a little bit. It's something that you have to kind of accrue, and I've been picking it up here and there for a few months."

All of the players on the leader board Saturday morning, when the second round will continue, have one thing in common: first-round tee times originally scheduled for Thursday afternoon. And because play stopped Thursday at 10:15 a.m., they didn't deal with the hideous conditions Woods and others faced early on. Rather, they played their first rounds -- and the first portion of their second rounds -- during what might be the only palatable 10-hour span Bethpage will provide all week.

Consider the following assessments: