Bleak outlook for Woods

Tiger Woods endured the second-worst finish to a round of his professional career and predicted conditions at Bethpage Black would get worse as the rain-hit US Open progressed.

Woods finished his delayed opening round by going four-over-par over the final four holes, recording a run of double bogey, bogey, par, bogey to leave him with a four-over-74, 10 strokes behind eventual first-round leader Mike Weir.

In 230 professional starts the world number one has done that two other times, both in 1999 but at the 2007 Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill he finished par, bogey, double, triple bogey in his final round.

This was the first time Woods endured such a nightmare finish in a Major as his title defence got off to an inauspicious start on Long Island.

However, having seen his opening round spread out over 24 hours due to heavy rain that washed out Thursday's play, the American is bracing himself for another soggy day on Saturday when his second round will start under an 80% chance of rain and lots of it.

"I just have to continue to do what I'm doing and just hopefully clean up the round a little bit, maybe tomorrow, hopefully drive the ball in the fairway and get a couple of breaks and not catch 'em, but we'll see what happens.

"If it dries out more it will get worse. It's only going to get worse, unless we get more rain.

"And if we get more rain we won't catch them again."

Of his dismal ending to round one, Woods added: "I wasn't playing poorly.

"I was even-par with four to go, and I was right there where I needed to be, and two bad shots and a mud ball later, here we go and I'm at four-over-par."

With Woods in the wave of early starters on Thursday that will not get their second rounds under way until Saturday morning, the defending champion felt he had been in the unlucky half of the draw as the late starters played in the most favourable conditions from late morning until evening on Friday.

Yet asked if he would have preferred to have turned around quickly like the later starters, Woods said his bad day had left him more inclined to throw some clubs in frustration.

"As of the way I feel right now, no, I don't want to go back out there right now. Probably would be a few clubs light," he said.

Like Woods, England's Ian Poulter was forced to play in the early wave and saw his first round dragged out across two days. The Ryder Cup star, though, managed to stay in touch with the late starters as he posted an opening level-par 70 and he was willing to accept his fate in the luck of the draw.

"I don't mind," Poulter said. "It is what it is.

"Your draw is your draw. You can't think too much about it to be honest. It will be what will be.

"If it's going to rain in the morning it's going to rain and not much we can do about it. It's going to be a wet weekend from the forecast so just have to get on with it."

Poulter was more than happy with his opening salvo, given the circumstances.

"The golf course was playable but it was obviously saturated and obviously those holes on the back nine were playing longer than in practice.

"Good, solid start. I'm very happy, three birdies, three bogeys, and it's a nice start to a US Open."