Golf:The USA hold the advantage in two of the four Ryder Cup fourballs that resumed this afternoon after a seven-hour 15 minute delay forced a rethink of the tournament schedule. After play was suspended at 9.45am, Europe were up in three games but America came right back into it after the resumption at 5pm and only Lee Westwood, who carded five birdies, and Martin Kaymer are leading against Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson.
Before play was stopped for the evening at 7.05pm, a birdie putt at the 10th from Ian Poulter ensured Europe would trail in just two games overnight by restoring parity between himself and Ross Fisher's and the American duo of Steve Stricker and Tiger Woods.
The Northern Irish pairing of Graeme McDowell and Rory McIlroy did hold the upper hand prior to the morning's suspension but birdies at the 10th and 11th from the Matt Kuchar and Stewart Cink gave the USA a two-hole advantage.
In the final group, Luke Donald birdied the eighth to cut the lead of Dustin Johnson and Jeff Overton to one, after Pádraig Harrington struggled to find the sort of form team captain Colin Montgomerie hoped he would produce.
That said, the pairing is the only one to have improved on where it left off this morning, having closed the gap. McIlroy and McDowell were one up at that stage, as were Poulter and Fisher, while Westwood and Kaymer had a two shot lead over their opponents before they resumed.
Meanwhile, the tournament schedule has been altered by officials following the rain delay at Celtic Manor.
Today’s fourball matches will be completed tomorrow morning before the second session, which will now comprise six foursomes matches. The third session will then comprise two foursomes and four fourball matches and is to be followed by the 12 singles matches.
The timings of the sessions cannot be clarified at this stage as arrangements remain fluid with more poor weather expected over the weekend.
The agreement means there will still be a total of 28 points available, eight of which will be decided by foursomes, eight by fourballs and 12 singles with play hoped to be completed by Sunday as scheduled. That said play will continue into Monday if necessary.
Another upshot of the session reduction from five to four means all 12 players on each side will be in action for the remaining sessions and the most points an individual player will compete for is four instead of the traditional maximum of five.
European Tour chief executive George O'Grady said: "This all depends on the sky, we don't have a good forecast for Sunday but they are not always accurate, and if that happens we will then roll into Monday, keeping the singles sacrosanct whatever happens."
O'Grady added: "I congratulate the captains on taking this groundbreaking step. We feel it's our obligation to do everything we can, while maintaining the integrity of the match, to finish on Sunday.
"We considered a lot of things. The easy thing was to scrap one session but we wanted to maintain the 28-point format and felt this was a way to keep it on track.
"The players agreed to this without huge convincing. They can see it's a slight change of the schedule but we preserve 28pts and we have options now to definitely get in by Sunday night."
Friday Fourballs (Europe first)
Lee Westwood/Martin Kaymer 1 upPhil Mickelson/Dustin Johnson thru 12
Rory McIlroy/Graeme McDowell 2 downStewart Cink/Matt Kuchar thru 11
Ian Poulter/Ross Fisher A/SSteve Stricker/Tiger Woods thru 10
Luke Donald/Pádraig Harrington 1 downBubba Watson/Jeff Overton thru 8
Friday Fourballs prior to rain delay (Europe first)
Lee Westwood/Martin Kaymer 2 upPhil Mickelson/Dustin Johnson thru 5
Rory McIlroy/Graeme McDowell 1 upStewart Cink/Matt Kuchar thru 4
Ian Poulter/Ross Fisher 1 upSteve Stricker/Tiger Woods thru 3
Luke Donald/Pádraig Harrington 2 downBubba Watson/Jeff Overton thru 2