Two sorts of Mondays: Merion Golf Club in '81 versus today

Luckily, Monday's just for practice at the U.S. Open.

Because the rain was the winner on the first day of the weeklong event at Merion Golf Club. An early morning thunderstorm ruined the show for early morning spectators as Tiger Woods' practice round was initially cut short.

By 11:30 a.m., though, Woods and other players who make up the field for the 113th national championship were back on the fairways and greens. They could be seen with caddies, managers and instructors plotting the landing zones for drives and distances around the greens.

Rain halted for a couple hours just before and after noon and in the grandstand behind the 14th, buddies Kurt Ellis and Jim Lansing watched golfer Kevin Streelman calculate lines between hypothetical hole locations.

Both were at Merion on the Monday the course last hosted the U.S. Open in 1981. The scene was completely different, Ellis said.

"We walked the course with Jack [Nicklaus]. You could walk right along in the fairway," Ellis, of Levittown, Bucks County, said. "There were about 10 people following him."

Despite the rain and mud that quickly made slop of the course paths for spectators, Merion was crowded by 1 p.m. Then a drizzle began again.

Ellis, who saw one other U.S. Open, at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., in 1968, said the strak difference in the atmosphere between Monday and that first day in the 1981, which was won by David Graham, was noticeable from the gate.

"Can you believe you need metal detectors to watch a golf tournament?" he asked. "It's a totally different world."

He and Lansing then compared what Ellis used to make when he caddied — at Oak Hill, he said.

"I got $4 for two bags! That's outrageous," he said, not happy to hear a going rate these days at high-end clubs can be $80 a bag.

"A sixpack of beer was $1.50 then, though," another friend joked.