Simon Lewis, Bethpage
So what do golfers do when rain stops play? Apart from moan and grumble of course, that's a given.
Well, it seems they are pretty much like the rest of us when gathered together in the face of adversity. They hunker down, swap stories, tell jokes ...and then moan and grumble some more.
Yesterday at the US Open was a perfect storm in more ways than one as Bethpage went from 'Deathpage' to 'Bathpage' in the course of three hours and 15 minutes.
Of the 78 golfers that did manage to tee off on Thursday before puddles the size of Lough Erne formed on the Black course and sent them scurrying back to the clubhouse, only 15 managed to reach the turn.
“Sitting down with some buddies, just eating and waiting, telling jokes, learning the rules of cricket and learning jokes from my buddy's eight-year-old daughter,” American qualifier Peter Tomasulo wrote in an email to a journalist friend of his. “Gonna go to a movie if they give us a longer update.”
There, you see, a little dig. Golfers like to have things mapped out for them way in advance and 30-minute updates from the USGA are just not long-term enough.
There are other things the tournament organisers could have been doing as Ian Poulter let his more than 54,000 followers know on Twitter yesterday afternoon.
“Guys you will laugh your ass off at this,” he microblogged. “We have just been told by the usga that when it stops raining they can get this course playable in 1 hour.”
The Englishman then posted a picture he'd taken with his mobile phone that portrayed the practice putting green compeltely under water.
“Where's my canoe?” read Poulter's accompanying text.
Play, coincidentally, was called to a halt for the day some 30 minutes later which, incidentally, stirred the occupants of the media centre to let out a hearty cheer almost akin to a Mickelson birdie in front of his New York fans.
Of course, Twittering in itself is a means to pass the time and there is no more popular an exponent of the art than Stewart Cink, who has built a following of more than 250,000.
Cink, it has been revealed from careful study of his 140-character messages, is a careful one with the bobs. He was aggrieved at the recent Memorial tournament to note that the hotel he was staying in at for almost $200 a night was being occupied by a group of internet savvy caddies who booked the same rooms for $44.
And so to Bethpage where we learned that rain delays cost Cink money, $100 on a family outing to a California Pizza Kitchen, while he was signing autographs for Wall Street types on copies of The Economist.
Not that caddies get any time off. One e-mailed an Australian journalist in the media centre to explain he had just snuck in to the clubhouse to dry his undies with a bathroom hairdryer while Poulter tweeted that he had sent his looper, Terry Mundy to blow dry his golf bag.
And you thought they just played cards.
