Danny Willett had feared Armageddon ahead of Friday's second round, but the vicar's son from England mastered the conditions to lead the weather-affected Open Championship at St Andrews.
Torrential early rain meant the first group had not completed the opening hole before play was suspended due to waterlogged greens and fairways on the Old Course, leading to a delay of three hours and 14 minutes.
When play resumed at 10am, Willett - who carded an opening 66 to lie one behind overnight leader Dustin Johnson - took full advantage of the relatively benign conditions with birdies on the second and fifth to claim the outright lead.
The 27 year old was joined on eight under when Zach Johnson also picked up shots on the fifth and sixth, but after Willett holed from 25 feet for birdie on the ninth and just five feet on the tenth, former Masters Tournament winner Johnson three-putted the 11th and dropped another shot on the 12th.
As the wind strengthened, that gave Willett – who started the season with a second European Tour win at the Nedbank Golf Challenge - a three shot lead over Dustin Johnson, who was now not due out until 5:48pm alongside Masters and US Open champion Jordan Spieth due to the earlier delay.
With the last group scheduled to tee off at 7:27pm, many players will have to return on Saturday to complete their second rounds.
But R&A chief executive Peter Dawson insisted that significant changes would not be made to the order of play, unlike last year at Royal Liverpool when a two-tee start was used for the first time in Open history due to a bad weather forecast for Saturday's third round.
"[We've] only done it once at Hoylake," Dawson told the BBC. "The prospect of changing it during competition and doing a two-tee start is not something we are going to do. The order you play the holes in on a links course is very important.
"The forecast is for very strong winds so it is a very tough course today and tomorrow, but because we have had so much rain it's nowhere near as fiery as it can be so I'm very hopeful that (wind) won't affect play.
"Our target is to finish on Sunday. We do have the ability to go into Monday (the last time that happened was at Lytham in 1988), but we certainly hope not to."
Willett made his first mistake of the day by three-putting from just off the 15th green and his lead was down to two when Scotland's Marc Warren, who carded a closing 64 in the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open on Sunday, birdied the 18th to complete an excellent 69.
Johnson had stopped the rot with a birdie on the 13th but also bogeyed the 15th and was joined on six under by fellow former Masters Tournament champion Adam Scott.
Scott, who persuaded former caddie Steve Williams to come out of retirement at the start of June, had gone to the turn in 34 and picked up shots on the 11th and 12th.
