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Grounds crews work to repair the bunkers on Merion's 11th hole after heavy rains flooded out the hole on Monday.

(Eileen Bliss/USA Today Sports)

ARDMORE, Pa. — Late in the afternoon Monday, the maintenance yard at Merion Golf Club was oddly quiet. The skies had opened up for the sixth time since noon, drenching the course and everything on it, officially spoiling the reunion party between the club and the U.S. Open. Ryan Tuxhorn had seen dozens of days like this in seven years on the grounds staff, but this?

This, was getting borderline ridiculous.

"This water isn't even doing anything now," said Tuxhorn, now the head superintendent at Somerset Hills in Bernardsville, as he held his right hand out from underneath the shed. "Everything is full. We can't get any wetter than we are right now."

As he finished talking, the skies opened up even harder.

For 32 years, Merion waited for the USGA to come back down Ardmore Avenue with the national championship in the back of the car. All the talk was about whether the small, tight layout could hold up to the modern golf technology. Would it show that the classic golf course design was still relevant? Would it prove that even though the East Course measures less than 7,000 yards, it's still championship-worthy?

Those questions gone now, washed down Cobb's Creek with much of Monday's first practice day. There's only one that remains.

Will Merion dry in time?

"Just because there's areas of casual water down on 11 fairway, as along as a player can take relief from that casual water and not go somewhere too far away, that's something we take into consideration," USGA executive director Mike Davis said. "How much is a bunker completely flooded would be another one. Just because they're wet or there is standing water, that wouldn't preclude us from playing golf."

But it's coming close. Since Friday, when heavy storms from Tropical Storm Andrea soaked the course over 3 1/2 inches of rain, Merion has been taking on water with little time to dry. More rains — over 1 1/2 inches — pounded the course all day Monday from before the break of dawn through dinner time.

Play was suspended before the course even opened, delaying the start of practice rounds until 11 a.m. Small pockets of players took to the course to get some prep work in before another suspension came down at 3:01 p.m. for more than a half-hour. However, the rains had already done their damage.

The lowest-lying part of the course — the 11th fairway, which is split by the creek — was totally submerged by 7:30 in the morning, with water up to the hazard line after the creek flooded. The USGA made the decision to close the hole for the day, to not only prevent spectator accidents, but also allow the grounds crew of over 100 volunteers like Tuxhorn to work to repair flushed out bunkers.

"Certainly it's saturated," said Merion's Director of Grounds, Matt Shaffer. "But the good thing down on 11 is that the water comes up fast, but it also recedes very quickly. And it's silt, so it will dry really, really quickly. We just need a little bit of sunshine."

That's the U.S. Open's next problem: As of dinnertime Monday, the forecast for Tuesday was projecting cloudy skies and the potential for passing thunderstorms. And Thursday's first round is striking the most fear into the USGA — it's bad (and wet) enough for folks to have nightmarish flashbacks of the opening round of the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, which was postponed because of rain.

"In terms of the set up, this golf course is not built on sand, so it's got the heavier soils," Davis said. "But it is maybe the best draining golf course I have ever seen. If you walk this course, you know there's hardly any flat lies at Merion. It's surface drains beautifully."

Tuxhorn knows that better than anybody.

He knows every piece of the property, having taken care of it through storms and every weather obstacle as one of Shaffer's top assistants before moving to Somerset Hills. He came back to volunteer this week, in part, because he was here when Merion was awarded the Open. Tuxhorn wants to see it play the way he knows it can: Hard and fast. But with every raindrop Monday, that possibility was being eroded.

"There's nowhere for it to go right now," Tuxhorn said. "It's like if you had a five-gallon bucket of water and kept pumping water into it. It's just going to keep overflowing. Five minutes of rain and you have puddles on the green and the fairways. There's just nowhere for it to go."