Storm causes delay at US Open

Cliff Kresge, a 44-year-old Floridian ranked No. 551 in the world, hit the first tee shot of the first round early yesterday, the first of 156 players on the historic course.

The marquee group was scheduled to tee off shortly after lunchtime.
Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott are together as the top three players in the world rankings, although a forecast calling for severe storms in the afternoon could delay or interrupt their round.

Phil Mickelson also had an early tee time — 7:11am — after making an overnight flight from San Diego, where he watched his oldest daughter graduate from the eighth grade.

For all the extraordinary effort it took to shoehorn a modern-day championship onto the historic but intimate course, there was nothing anyone could do about the 6½ inches of rain that has soaked the Philadelphia area during the last week.

Sunny days Tuesday and Wednesday helped dry out things a bit, but one look at the radar yesterday morning indicated that stormy skies would return in a matter of hours.

The various forecasts led to a USGA news conference Wednesday that covered topics like hail, standing water and the dreaded “potentially damaging winds.”

At one point during a long and otherwise straight-laced opening statement, USGA vice president Tom O’Toole spoke about the presentation of the championship trophy — then rolled his eyes skyward and added: “which we hope will be Sunday.”

The forecast also renewed calls for officials to break with US Open tradition and allow players to lift, clean and replace balls in the fairway if the conditions get nasty.

“I would be a fan of being able to clean the mud off,” said Matt Kuchar, a two-time winner this year on the PGA Tour.

“I think it’s one of those really rotten breaks in golf. Driving it in a divot is a rotten break, but most of us can figure it out from there. You drive down the middle of the fairway and you have mud on the ball and you have no idea what’s going to happen, you have no real control.

It seems like a guy might be rewarded more for missing fairways in those situations, being in the rough, not picking up the mud.”

Nice try. But such protestations went nowhere fast.
“We wouldn’t be adopting that rule this week,” O’Toole said. “And if it was so bad, then the obvious response to that, or consequence, would be we probably wouldn’t be playing.” — AP.