At British Open, craziness has become the norm at St. Andrews

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — A lot of crazy things happen in the British Open.

Jean van de Velde quickly comes to mind. It's just the way things are with the oldest championship in golf, a culture shock for many on and off the course.

Players have plenty with which to contend when they head to the Open Championship — from finding good places to eat to packing clothes for all four seasons to adjusting their games to succeed on rumpled, windswept ground. They know about haggis and the Hell Bunker and the Road Hole at the Old Course, the Home of Golf and the home to the 144th British Open.

Controlling emotions is as important as controlling shots.

But when the clock struck midnight and turned Thursday into Friday, a whole new kettle of fish and chips confronted the players.

Sea gulls took to the course instead of golfers as the Valley of Sin and the Hell Bunker were full of water after torrential rains Friday morning flooded the course. The Road Hole was a swimming pool. Half the 2nd green was under water. The rest of the course wasn't much better off.

Things finally dried out enough to play until 9:50 p.m. local time.

Then Saturday morning broke and the sea gulls took shelter as winds whipped up to 40 mph off the North Sea and forced play to halt. And then players had to deal with the decision of the R&A, the rulers of the tournament.

Officials tested golf balls on the 11th green – the only green they did testing, mind you – to see how they would react in the wind. For 45 minutes starting at 5:30 a.m. officials putted and rolled balls and watched stationary balls on the greens. They said the wind was not moving the balls and decided to have play resume as schedule at 7 a.m.

Thirty-two minutes later play was halted – which was long enough for players to lose strokes, watch balls move all over the place and howl at the R&A.

Jordan Spieth, going for a third straight major championship victory, said play should never have started at 7 a.m. as winds were knocking golf balls silly and all over the place.

"We got out on the range to warm up and the winds were just as windy if not windier than when we started play," Spieth said. He three-putted his first hole of the day and had five 3-putts in the round. "It's was tough. Even putting on the practice green before we went out the ball wasn't coming to rest. But we still started. … It was an interesting round that took a long time."

Brooks Koepka needed 10 hours, 30 minutes to make a putt. He refused to putt on the 11th hole, the highest green on the course. His ball wouldn't come to a complete rest and he feared if he struck it when it moved, he'd receive a penalty. Or if a gust of wind would knock the ball into his putter, another penalty. When play resumed at 6 p.m., he made the putt.

So add the need for players to stifle anger. And scramble to change flights and update hotel accommodations because now they have to gear up for Monday.

The R&A announced the plan was to finish the second round on Saturday, play the third round Sunday and finish on Monday. The only other time there was a Monday finish in the oldest championship in golf was in 1988 – Spieth, by the way, hadn't been born yet.

Then again, we could have the first Tuesday finish.

"You best be prepared for the worst and hope for the best," ESPN analyst Paul Azinger said. "Control only what you can control. Don't waste time complaining about things you can't control, and you and I and everyone knows you can't control the weather or we'd snap our fingers and it would be 80 in sunshine with soft breezes."

What could have been controlled was the speed of the greens, which despite all the moisture the course has received the past month and all the rain that fell Friday and all the forecasts of impending doom in the form of wind, they are still running above 10 on the Stimpmeter. Yes, the R&A, which along with the USGA has done nothing to stifle the advances in golf ball and club technology but did ban anchoring, decided to go above 10 and cut the greens too short.

"What we saw today was too strong of winds, not too fast of greens," said R&A chief executive Peter Dawson.

Many, many others disagreed.

"If they were running at 9," Azinger said, "they would have been playing."

This is the third straight Open at St. Andrews that has seen play halted by high winds – the 2010 and 2015 men's championships and the 2013 women's championship. What's that line about the definition of insanity?

"The absurdity with golf currently is that drives go 40 to 50 yards further, yet we can't be asked to hit putts 2-3 feet harder," tweeted PGA Tour veteran Bob Estes, who grew up in Texas and played golf in 60 mph gusts. But that was years ago. "If the greens would've been this fast when I was in HS ('80s), we never would've crowned a district or regional champion out in West Texas."

So add the speed of the greens to the checklist scrambling the minds of the best players in the world. Many, mind you, who are wondering what's going to happen next.

PHOTOS: CRAZY SATURDAY AT ST. ANDREW'S