Umbrellas, raincoats and squegees headlined Day 1 of the US Open and caused play to be suspended until Friday. Rain was expected throughout the day at Bethpage Black, but the playing conditions were made worse due to the previous two weeks where rain was a regular occurrence. Play resumed at 7:30am this morning instead of 7, which I’m guessing is for the grounds crew to have an extra half hour to prepare the course as best they can. The schedule for today looks like this:

All players who were scheduled to tee off on Thursday afternoon will tee off first thing Friday morning. The groups that were supposed to start at 12:30 will begin at 10:30am Friday.

Image Courtesy of the Baltimore Sun

This means that Round 2 will begin at 4pm Friday and will spill over into Saturday and will in-turn delay the rest of the tournament.

This seems like good news for now, but not when you consider the forecast for the rest of the weekend. Rain, rain and more rain is expected to fall on Bethpage Black, which could possibly push the finish into early next week. So for all you golf fans out there, you better make sure you think of a good excuse to call out of work next week.

This would be a disaster if there is a Tiger/Phil playoff or something of the sort. It’s kind of far-fetched, but if Tiger and Phil end up squaring off against one another this would make for one of the greatest major tournaments of all-time. Not only is this a dream matchup for golf fans everywhere, but when you add in Tiger’s recent struggles and Phil’s wife recently being diagnosed with breast cancer it gives the rivalry a little more flare.

Just think…on one side you would have Tiger trying to add yet another major to his already magnificent legacy and on the other side you would have Phil playing on sheer emotion, which can sometimes be enough to beat even the best. Can you imagine the buzz around not only the golf world, but the world in general. Women who have never watched a minute of golf in their whole lives would be stuck in front of the television (or computer if they’re at work) cheering for “the guy whose wife has breast cancer.”

The excitement would surely be there, that is, if Mother Nature can hold off on dumping massive amounts of rain on us. Only time will tell, but let’s hope she can grant us at least a couple days of dry weather so this tournament can at least be finished by next week!