Spectators told to arrive later after heavy rain at The Open

 
20 July 2012

Spectators were asked to delay their arrival for the second day of the Open Championship today after heavy rain overnight left standing water on parts of the Royal Lytham course.

Play got under way at 6:30am as scheduled, but fans were directed to different entrance gates as work was carried out to improve conditions.

"We've had far more rain overnight than we were expecting, unfortunately," R&A chief executive Peter Dawson told BBC Radio Five Live.

"There's been 11mm or so but the course can take it as the drainage here is good. There is some standing water but we can play golf and the Rules of Golf will deal with the casual water.

"The spectator conditions are not so good but we are working hard. We are told it will be dry for the rest of the day but, if anyone was thinking about delaying their arrival, that would be good."

Australia's Brendan Jones initially made light of the conditions with a birdie two on the first - Lytham is the only course of the Open rota to begin with a par three - to improve to two under par, but then dropped shots at the next two holes to fall back to level par.

Overnight leader Adam Scott, who carded a record-equalling 64 on Thursday, was among the later starters, with Belgium's Nicolas Colsaerts likely to be the first player to challenge the Australian's position at the top of the leaderboard.

Colsaerts was one shot off the lead after an opening 65 and was due out shortly before 9am.

England's Luke Donald was due out at 9:42am, but the world number one revealed he would be without regular caddie John McLaren as he looked to improve on an opening round of 70.

Donald wrote on his Twitter page: "New caddy (Gareth Lord) on the bag today as I've given Johnny the day off to welcome his 1st child into the world!! Gd luck Mr & Mrs McLaren."

Lord usually works for Sweden's Robert Karlsson but became available after the former European number one withdrew on Wednesday due to problems with his game.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT