GOLF/US PGA Championship: The one thing guaranteed to instil fear into a professional golfer is the frenzied shenanigans around a scoreboard that often accompanies the displaying of a weather warning, and then the klaxon that confirms the danger. It causes a dread greater than the one that arises at the prospect of a devilish, left-to-right breaking putt for par, or the prospect of playing a horrendously plugged ball from a bunker.

In this case, more than the importance of a golf shot, it can be a matter of life or death.

As grey clouds unfurled their fury over the city of Chaska yesterday morning, the first round of the US PGA at Hazeltine - where lightning struck and killed a spectator during the 1991 US Open - was only an hour and 23 minutes old when such a warning was issued.

Tiger Woods had only three minutes earlier struck his opening drive down the 10th fairway, and had not even reached his ball, when the call to return to the safety of the clubhouse came.

The local time was 8.38 a.m., and it was to be just eight minutes short of three hours later before play managed to resume.

In many ways, the disruption was to be expected: each of the three previous majors this season had also been dealt dud hands by the weather gods.

"It's part of what we do," remarked a philosophical John Cook, who hadn't started his round at that point. "You've just got to accept it. You know you're going to be back early tomorrow, and that it is going to be a long day."

Padraig Harrington and Darren Clarke were also among the late starters - made even later by the weather - who set off knowing their rounds wouldn't be completed the same day.

Others, though, did get to finish. And, once the thunderstorms had abated and moved on to other areas of the mid-west, the rain-softened greens were more receptive than they might have been and it was left to a persistent and stiff wind to accentuate the course's difficulty. Some, however, proved more than capable of mastering it; and nobody did it better than Jim Furyk.

So far this season, Furyk, who went head-to-head with Woods in last year's NEC Invitational and lost, has had six top-10 finishes and one win on the US Tour.

He has been something of a sleeping giant in the majors, however, having missed the cut in all three. Yesterday, his time came; and an opening round of four-under-par 68 gave him the clubhouse lead.

Furyk started at the 10th and gave no hint of the fireworks to come when turning in an unspectacular level par.

On the way back, however, he didn't put a foot wrong. The American Ryder Cup player birdied the first, second, sixth and seventh to set the pace. He was a shot clear of Australian Peter Lonard, who followed up a birdie at the 16th with a long birdie putt on the 17th to get to four-under, only to bogey the last for a 69.

"It's been a strange season," said Furyk. "I've either played really well or poorly and my form has been just so inconsistent. But when I have played well, I have played really well. I've been disappointing in the majors, but all it takes is one good week in the majors to make it good."

It didn't come quite so easy for Woods, who had a tendency to pull his drives left. At least he stayed very much in contention with a 71, which a number of other players found difficult to achieve.

Among those to struggle were Sergio Garcia, who had a disastrous finish for a 75. The Spaniard double-bogeyed the 16th, where the wind coming in off Lake Hazeltine caused significant problems, and then bogeyed the 17th.

Davis Love was very much in the thick of things, at three-under, until his tee-shot at the 16th was pulled left into the creek and he too signed for a six.

Woods started well, failed to maintain the momentum, and suffered back-to-back bogeys mid-round.

When he hit a six-iron approach to 10 feet at the 12th - his third - for his second birdie, it seemed as if the world number one was in cruise control.

But a wayward drive on the 18th, which finished in the rough that separates the hole from the ninth, led to a bogey, and, having missed the green on the first, his 10th, Woods barely managed to extricate the ball from the greenside rough and suffered another bogey that brought him back to level par.

But a birdie on the short fourth brought him back to one-under, which is where he finished.

His playing partner Ernie Els had an up and down day, but closed with a bogey to remain on level par.

For Paul McGinley, his ball-striking over his first nine suggested he had finally rid himself of his summer woes.

He went one-under when hitting a six-iron approach to 10 feet on the sixth, and gave himself a number of other birdie chances which, frustratingly, didn't drop, and he paid the price when recording back-to-back bogeys at the 12th and 13th holes.