U.S. Open Notes: First round a success for Donald so far

As afternoon turned into evening Thursday at Merion Golf Club, Luke Donald capitalized on the rain-softened conditions to find himself on the top of the leader board - with an asterisk - in the first round of the U.S. Open.

Donald birdied the last three holes he played before darkness forced a halt to the proceedings and stood at 4 under par through 13 holes on a day when rain halted the competition for more than four hours.

Phil Mickelson is the leader in the clubhouse after a 3-under 67.

"Obviously the weather conditions are making the course a lot softer, and you can attack the pins a little bit more," said Donald, 35, a former world No. 1 player who has yet to win a major. "So it's playing as gentle as it might play so far. This afternoon didn't have much wind. If you were going to make a score, today was a good day."

Donald knows he'll have his work cut out when he returns Friday. He has Merion's feared Final Five to play. The quarry holes - 16 through 18 - played as the fifth-, fourth-, and second-toughest holes, respectively, on Thursday.

"I've got five pretty tough ones to finish," he said, "but I'm really happy with the way I started my round."

Keegan Bradley, the 2011 PGA champion, saw his round hit a bad bump with a triple bogey at the par-4 16th, the first of Merion's quarry holes, and finished with a 77.

Bradley hit his tee shot in the rough and tried to go for the green, but the ball wound up in the quarry.

"I made a mistake in trying to go for the green," he said.

Counting Bradley, three scores of worse than double bogey were posted at 16.

Bubba Watson fired a 71 in his first competitive trip around Merion and said the fact that the grounds crew cut down the rough the night before might have lured some players into a false sense of security.

"We think we can hit out of it," said Watson, the 2012 Masters champion. "So we're hitting shots that we think we can do and then getting into another bad spot."

Watson said that some greens were faster than others, and that the hole locations were in spots where players couldn't get to them even though they could spin the ball.

"I think the golf course is right around where I thought it would be," he said. "Not too many low scores. This is a real golf course here - a real test."

Former Temple star Geoffrey Sisk got off to a bad start in his seventh U.S. Open, carding a 78 that included seven bogeys, a double bogey, and a birdie - on his final hole, the 301-yard, par-4 10th.