Scotland’s weather: Torrential rain floods Old Course

TORRENTIAL early rain left its mark on the Old Course at St Andrews as play was suspended for more than three hours and continued to have an effect when play restarted.

Flooding appears on the course at St Andrews on the second day of The Open. Picture: SNS

Many greens and fairways, particularly the first and 18th, were flooded, which meant the handful of golfers on the course at 6.46am were brought in with none having been able to complete even one hole in the second round of the 144th Open Championship.

Groundstaff worked feverishly to get the course playable, but once it got under way again at 10am a consequence was significantly slower greens.

But R&A chief executive Peter Dawson insists, unlike last year at Royal Liverpool when it took the unprecedented step of deciding in advance of the third round to have a two-tee start on the Saturday in an attempt to avoid bad weather forecast later in the day, that it will not be making significant changes to the order of play.

“[We’ve] only done it once at Hoylake,” he told the BBC. “The prospect of changing it during competition (ie after groups have started) and doing a two-tee start is not something we are going to do.”