Has Mother Nature lent a helping hand at Oakmont at US Open Golf?

Fireworks arrived early at the 107th U.S. Open. It remained to be seen how much red glare would decorate the leaderboard.

Despite nearly a half-inch of rain Wednesday afternoon, Oakmont Country Club still was expected to be a tempestuous layout as the national championship got under way as scheduled at 7 a.m. ET Thursday in suburban Pittsburgh under sunny skies and light breezes.

PGA TOUR rookie Ken Duke of Palm City, Fla., hit the first tee shot of the championship, the eighth U.S. Open held at Oakmont, and pumped it into the left rough. Nonplussed, he hacked his second out of the hay about 70 yards short of the green, and then flipped a wedge shot on the putting surface. In a textbook illustration of the speed Oakmont's greens retained, Duke watched his ball trickle slowly but steadily towards the hole before dropping in for the first birdie of the tournament.

Excitedly, Duke raised his arm triumphantly and then shared an enthusiastic high-five with his caddie, Phil Purker. Playing partners Johnson Wagner and Sam Walker, who had both hit the fairway and the green, tuck their putters under their arms to applaud Duke. They then proceeded to two-putt for routine pars.

No one could know how many more routine pars there would be among the field of 156 players at an Open test constantly being billed as perhaps the hardest in recent memory -- even more rigorous than last year's edition at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., where Geoff Ogilvy won at 6 over par.

Late Wednesday evening Mike Davis, the U.S. Golf Association's senior director of rules and competitions and the man in charge of the Open setup, wasn't sure the thunderstorms that moved swiftly across the course didn't take too much fire out of the famed course that plays to par 70 and 7,230 yards.

Red numbers, signifying scores under par, appeared to be available early. By the time two-time champion Tiger Woods began his opening round at 8:06 a.m. -- a round for which he started preparing at 6:45 a.m. with putting on the huge practice green behind the ninth hole -- there were six players at 1 under par and eight had made at least one birdie.

"I can't imagine any of the players being unhappy with what's happened," Davis said after surveying the course about 8 p.m. Wednesday. "The greens are still fast, but they're receptive. And I don't think we'll really see a change in them until maybe the afternoon on Friday. We lost, essentially, two days."

The forecast for the remainder of the day called for a mixture of sun and low clouds with an easterly breeze picking up slightly in the afternoon. Temperatures were to reach near 80 degrees.

Scores, Davis said, could reach as low as 66. "There could be a little bit of throwing darts out there," he predicted.

The question as the first day unfolded was when Oakmont -- or "Oakmonster" as Rory Sabbatini called it -- would start to bite back. - Source: By Dave Shedloski, PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent