Poulter's early progress

Ian Poulter made a brilliant start to the 113th US Open at Merion as Ryder Cup team-mate Sergio Garcia suffered a nightmare spell either side of a three-and-a-half-hour weather delay.

Starting from the 11th tee, Poulter had just posted his third birdie in succession on the 115-yard par-three 13th when the siren sounded to call the players off the course.

Torrential rain then started falling around 40 minutes later and quickly left standing water on several greens, with the 11th of particular concern as it is situated where two creeks converge and was almost flooded during a downpour last Friday.

After a drive into heavy rough on the 14th Poulter dropped his first shot of the day, but worse had already befallen Garcia in the group ahead. The Spaniard had been warned by Colin Montgomerie that he could be booed by fans in the wake of his "fried chicken" row with Tiger Woods, but the one person who did so half-heartedly on the 11th tee was drowned out by cheers and cries of 'Go get 'em Sergio'.

Garcia, playing alongside former Open champions Padraig Harrington and Stewart Cink, opened with a bogey but also birdied the 13th to get back to level par, but then pulled his drive on the 14th out of bounds to run up a double-bogey six.

And when he did the same on the 15th - his drive bouncing onto the balcony of a hospitality tent - that led to a quadruple bogey eight to drop him to 77th place out of the 78 players on the course.

Poulter responded to his bogey with a superb curling birdie putt on the 15th that was moving sideways by the time it dropped into the hole, reclaiming the outright lead on three under as former Masters champion Charl Schwartzel bogeyed the 18th.

Poulter suffered back-to-back bogeys on the 17th and 18th, failing to get up and down from a greenside bunker on the latter after needing a fairway wood for his second shot to the 521-yard par four.

At one under par he was just one off the lead, however, with Schwartzel and Tim Clark joined by another South African in George Coetzee, former Masters champion Mike Weir and Taiwanese amateur Cheng-Tsung Pan. Garcia later brightened up his scorecard considerably, a birdie on the first followed by an eagle from 25ft on the par-five second taking him to four over par.

Mickelson had briefly moved into the outright lead with a birdie on the seventh, but was joined on two under by veteran compatriot Jerry Kelly, the 46-year-old having carded three birdies and just one bogey in his first 15 holes. Belgium's Nicolas Colsaerts was one behind with just one hole to play, the Ryder Cup star recovering from three bogeys in five holes with birdies at the seventh and eighth.