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Rain delay stops play at Ryder Cup

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11:00 a.m. ET Update: Golf will resume on Friday! At 5 p.m. in Wales, or 12 p.m. ET, the matches will resume. They believe they'll get between 90 and 100 minutes of golf, so expect the first group to be somewhere around the ninth hole when play is suspended for good on Friday.

If Wales is known for one thing, it might be drinking, but not far down on that list of popular pastimes is rain. Rain, rain, rain.

Mother Nature snuck her ugly head into the opening fourball matches at the Ryder Cup, suspending play after just five holes. From the start, rain poured down on the players as they tried to stay dry, but it became too much when Steve Stricker was trying to find relief from casual water on the fourth hole and realized there wasn't any.

So far, the weather was beneficial for the Europeans, who were up in three of the four morning matches at Celtic Manor.

The opening match had Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer 2-up on Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, who struggled to find fairways in the rain and wind. Westwood, who raised a ton of questions after an injury kept him out of competitive golf since early August, drained a birdie putt on the par-5 fourth hole as a huge grin crept across his face.

That might have been because the other matches seemed pro-Euro. Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell are 1-up on Stewart Cink and Matt Kuchar. Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker, the duo that dominated the Presidents Cup a year ago, are 1-down in their match to Ian Poulter and Ross Fisher. The lone American flag on the leaderboard might be the most surprising of all the matches. Rookies Bubba Watson and Jeff Overton are 2-up through two holes over Luke Donald and Padraig Harrington after Overton drained a lengthy birdie putt from off the back of the first green, and Watson stuck his third shot on the second to a foot and tapped it in for a birdie.

We will continue to update the progress at the Ryder Cup, but for now, it seems rain will continue to pelt the golfers.