British Open 2015: Heavy rains at St. Andrews force major weather delay on Friday

It takes a lot for weather to delay the Open Championship, but the second round of the 2015 edition was halted just two groups into the day. The opening tee time of Mark Calcavecchia, Marcel Siem and Jaco Van Zyl made it out onto the course and up to the first green, but things were called shortly thereafter for more than three hours.

That first tee time went out at 6:32 a.m. local time and play is tentatively scheduled to resume at 10 a.m. local (5 a.m. ET). The second tee time of Thomas Aiken, Jonas Blixt and David Lipsky also made it to the first hole and are technically out on the course, but they were just a shot into the round before they were hauled back off the Old Course.

Heavy rain was in the forecast for the morning half of play on Friday, but it came harder than expected and the course became unplayable quickly. At The Open, they will play in anything, and have over the years, unless the course becomes unplayable. There was standing water all around the first tee and 18th hole and the bunkers were full of water. Someone with a sense of humor decided to put a rubber ducky in a pond that had formed in that “valley of sin” in front of the 18th green.

Morgan Hoffmann was in the next tee time to go before play was called, and was laughing on the putting green as he tried to roll his ball through puddles. Calcavecchia, one of the handful of players to actually hit a shot in the awful stuff, was completely soaked just minutes into the round.

The morning draw is the group that probably catches a break here. The rain became just heavy enough that the course was unplayable. Otherwise, they would have been out there in awful conditions getting brutalized by the the Scottish links weather. Now they’ll have a relatively clean (but soaked) course and won’t be teeing off until the rain has dissipated. The casual water rule will apply when they get back out there.

You can play golf past 10 p.m. in Scotland this time of year but with essentially the entire field still to play 18 holes and a 3.5-hour delay, there’s no way they finish up and make the cut by Friday night.