Playing On, Weather or Not

So they played the U.S. Open and a flood broke out. It was supposed to rain Friday and it did just that, which meant that the second round at Bethpage Black would be a soggy, chilly mess.

Because Tiger Woods lives a charmed life, he enjoyed a slightly different experience. It rained on Tiger, but it was only sort of a sprinkle, and he was already safe and warm when it started coming down really hard in midafternoon.

It’s obvious that Tiger knows how to handle the elements. He can play on sunny days and he can play when they’re breaking out the lifeboats along the fairways. Through the raindrops, Woods birdied his closing hole for the second day in a row to end with a 68 and take a three-shot lead over the drenched guy closest to him.

Woods did make one concession to the rain, when he turned his cap around to make a putt so the water wouldn’t run off the brim and bother him.

Everyone should be so lucky to be as waterproof as Tiger. Actually, Bethpage Black held up well under the worsening conditions. But you had to wonder what would happen to the bunkers when you add a downpour to the 900,000 tons of sand they brought in. Would it become quicksand or oatmeal?

David Fay, the executive director of the U.S. Golf Assn., is no weatherman, but he certainly didn’t feel like making any excuses about the rain. That’s why Fay patiently explained that golf is played outdoors.

Sometimes there is sun, sometimes there is fog, sometimes there are clouds and sometime it’s wetter than bath time.

When Sergio Garcia played the 18th hole, a tiny creek had formed and was flowing from the green back down the fairway. He must have felt like an explorer. If the discovery of new bodies of water bothered Garcia, he didn’t let on, but he surely must have had wet hands with all the gripping and regripping he was doing.

Garcia also should have fetched a towel from his caddie to dry off the head of his club, which had to be soaked after all the time he was spending with his grip, but then he would have had to start all over again with the grip thing.

The grounds crew used squeegees to get the water off the greens and the tee areas, but that was not the most important piece of equipment for the players. Nor was it any single club. It was an umbrella.

There are two things about golf umbrellas: They are ugly and they are huge. They are so big because they are designed for two people, the player and his caddie, who is in charge of keeping the clubs dry. If there’s not enough room for the clubs, the caddie steps aside.

Umbrellas become hand-held towel racks. The caddies hang white towels from the spokes underneath and use them to dry clubs and also to wipe away the tears from trying to control the direction of a shot while you’re standing on a sponge.

As the day wore on, the entire Bethpage Black course became an undeclared water hazard. There were few defenses, but the players took as many precautions to prevent drowning, exposure, pneumonia or possibly something even worse, the double bogey.

Andy Miller chose an all-dark ensemble of foul-weather gear, topped off by a black hat with a narrow, turned-down, floppy brim, and finished with white shoes. He looked either like a cold front or one of the Sopranos.

Niclas Fasth of Sweden was bundled up tightly and almost certainly would have been just as comfortable carrying skis and waiting at the bottom of a slope for the lift.

Because he is from Northern Ireland, burly Darren Clarke knows all about cold summer weather, and he buttoned up his jacket to one of his chins.

There was also a brief sighting of South African Retief Goosen, the defending champion, just before he shot a round of 75 and missed the cut.

All you could see of Goosen were his two arms and his golf club sticking out of a grove of trees. The arms chopped the ball from the trees into a wet thatch of knee-high rough. Goosen wore only a waterproof windbreaker and a grim expression.

Jean Van de Velde wore a sweater and a short-sleeve shirt. It’s obvious the Frenchman doesn’t care about getting wet, which we have known about since he took off his shoes and climbed into that creek at Carnoustie a couple of years ago.

Of all the players, maybe the most enthusiastically dressed for the rain was Rocco Mediate. Here is a man with a sense of style, a renaissance Rain Man.

Mediate wore a black golf cap and on top of that, a fisherman’s cap. Everybody knows two hats are better than one. Or something like that.

Even though the sky was as dark as a bogey, Rocco donned wraparound shades. He also stuck a tee between his teeth, like a toothpick. With his black vest and white shirt, he could have been a character out of Dr. Seuss.

But after taking so many precautions to stay dry in the rain, Rocco refused to be an eccentric peg in a square hole. He didn’t wear a glove.

So his hands weren’t dry, big deal. Just grab something from the towel rack and slog on.