Ryder Cup play has been suspended

— Friday was the opening day of the Ryder Cup, a total of only 12 holes had been played by four groups, and there were issues:

1. Apparently, Captain Corey Pavin of the U.S. team and the PGA of America ordered the team rain suits from a company to be known heretofore as Sieve Industries. Chances are, they’ve also done work for hockey goalies.

2. Noah was not allowed to bring his Ark onto the grounds at Celtic Manor Resort, which was once the home of a golf course — by mid-afternoon Friday it was a place in need of a flotation device.

They stopped play at 9:45 a.m., calling the Twenty Ten course unplayable. It seemed a bit of a hasty decision at the time. Golf officials can be overly cautious, even with lost balls in ponds on the greens.

But then, the real reason for the stoppage came to light. The gear selected by the U.S. team to repel the rain wasn’t repelling. Think of draping a huge fishnet over your head and taking a shower and you get the picture. Usually, an issue for golfers in weather such as this is keeping their hands dry. This time, it was their navels.

Adding insult to injury was the reaction of the European team, when the story of the U.S. rain suits was leaked to them.

“Our suits are working fine,” said Rory McIlroy, whose team held a 3-1 lead.

Before they called a stop to the proceedings, things were becoming unseemly. There were unconfirmed reports of U.S. players walking near the ropes between shots, begging spectators, all nice and dry in their waterproof outfits from Target and Wal-Mart or the European equivalents, to trade rain suits. The begging quickly got out of hand.

“Do it for your country, or for the game of golf.”

“Please, please. I’m soaked and freezing.”

“I’ll trade you my yacht.”

The PGA of America, problem-solving group that it is, took immediate action. They knew, coming on the heels of their recent championship played on a golf course with more sand than the beaches of Normandy, and now having their Ryder Cup in a valley in rainy Wales in October, that there might be some criticism. That PGA tournament had ended with a disqualification of a potential winner and several thousand spectators standing in sand traps that were in play — not exactly the desired crescendo. And now, with the course a swamp and a dozen of its best players unable to get a grip because of the drips, it knew it was time to act.

So U.S. officials went to the public merchandise store and bought new rain suits off the shelves. Happily, there were no reports of sneaking in line. That would have been so ugly American.

Still, the issue remained a hot topic of discussion, which happens when you have 45,000 paying spectators wandering around in muck, and several hundred sports writers stranded in a big media center, with beer supplies dwindling.

Paul Azinger, the winning U.S. captain from 2008, who was here as a TV commentator and thus a member of the stranded media, fueled the fire when he said that getting correct rain suits “is the first thing you take care of.”

Pavin, who has had a somewhat rocky start as the U.S. captain, kept his cool when asked about why he let his team get all wet.

“We were disappointed with the performance of them [the rain suits],” he said, “and, you know, we just fixed it.”

Pavin also had to fix his gaffe at the opening ceremonies Thursday when he introduced his team and left veteran Stewart Cink sitting there, like a wallflower at a prom dance. Pavin got back to the podium quickly and corrected his oversight. And later discussion concluded that forgetting Cink was not all that stunning, since he is only 6-foot-4 and has won only one British Open.

European Captain Colin Montgomerie was somewhat sensitive to Pavin’s oversight and diplomatic at first, when asked about it. But he quickly came to his senses and concluded, after the opening ceremonies, “We are one-up.”

As the afternoon dragged on, with the only significant action of the day having taken place at the checkout line of the merchandise tent, officials continued to run a large crawl across course scoreboards and in the media center that said: “Based on the latest forecast, we are still hopeful play will resume this afternoon.”

It was just more water torture.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com