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GREENSBORO -- The rain-plagued Wyndham Championship took another hit Saturday afternoon when a summer deluge sent home a huge crowd just as Sedgefield Country Club was turned into a water park.

The good news is that everyone is invited back today, some for free.

Actually, they were free to hang around Saturday after an air-horn blast at 3:53 p.m. halted the social event of the season and delayed, again, the never-ending party that is our professional golf tournament. A massive gallery, assuming the day was over, walked up and down the long hills leading out of the golf course and toward the line of buses that took them back to the coliseum parking lots.

A few chose instead to stay and stand knee-deep in flash-flood puddles that formed when almost an inch of rain fell in less than an hour. Having already suffered through morning rain that delayed play for about 21/2 hours, the gallery had been more than ready for the official start of the third round at 12:09 p.m. All in all, it was worth it as the next few hours saw some of the most remarkable golf of the season with players allowed to lift and clean their golf balls in the fairways, then gently place them in perfect lies. The result was target golf, a game with which course designer Donald Ross was never familiar.

Over the course of about four hours, Sedgefield was besieged by wedges and 9-irons sending lofted shots high into the air and on perfect trajectories at defenseless pins. The balls had been sticking all week on the softened summer greens. Saturday was ridiculous.

The balls fell from the sky like meteors, crashing into the greens and planting themselves where they hit, sometimes inches from the cup, a few in the cup itself.

Chris Riley's 9-iron on his second shot of the day landed maybe 6 inches from the cup after being struck from 166 yards. Unlike most of the shots we saw Saturday, this one freed itself from wet gravity and lunged toward the hole, dropping in gently for an eagle-2.

And thus began the third round of the Wyndham Championship.

An impressive group of players aligned themselves at the top of the leaderboard as the morning rains soaked into the grass and left Sedgefield for the taking. For a brief moment, it appeared the course record of 60, set by Matthew Lane during the 1998 Nike Greensboro Open, would be in jeopardy. It looked as if the PGA Tour record of 59 held by three people might also be doomed.

Just as things were getting crazy, reports from Winston-Salem said that yet another strong storm was coming. Out of nowhere, a blob of orange appeared on radar screens just as warnings were issued to the area. The sky to the west of the golf course turned dark and ominous. The wind picked up slightly as players looked at the sky and the galleries turned restless.

Seven minutes before 4 p.m., with the tournament finally taking shape after two frustrating days of heat, rain and mud, an air horn echoed through the trees. The day appeared to be over.

Estimates from the course suggested this was one of the biggest galleries in years, and the line of people stretching up the cart paths at the ninth and 18th holes was a sad sight. A day of such promise ended up being a lost day.

For some anyway.

As the clouds pushed away and the sun broke through revealing a 7,130-yard pond, a party broke out. Folks in the Ross Pavilion overlooking the ninth green, having kept perfect decorum for days, held it in no longer. Laughter and loud crashes echoed down the fairway toward the huge bowl that forms around the lake inside the 15th and 16th holes. That's where sand has been trucked in, along with straw huts, girls and lawn chairs, to form a fake beachhead called Wyndham Beach.

Kids splashed in puddles, and women tired of being told to Shhhhh! since they were forced to come out here every day since Wednesday, were quiet no longer. No one was.

The social event of the season resumed, without golf. Drinks flowed and voices rose and the sun shone down on Sedgefield again.

Tournament officials walked the course, inspecting the greens, where the cups were filled with rainwater, and the fairways, some of which had whitecaps from the tide going out. Miracle worker Keith Wood, the course superintendent, simply went back to work.

A river flowed down the ninth fairway, breaking into tributaries and forming a large delta at the bottom of the valley. Erosion channels formed in sand traps.

As people stood ankle-deep in muck, the darnedest thing occurred. Tournament officials decided to resume play.

At 6:42 p.m., with Sunday TV concerns and FedEx Cup playoffs looming, the field was sent back out for a resumption of the third round without people.

One person at the top of the hill was smiling. That was Wood. He knew the course was ready. He knew his course could take it. And he thinks Sedgefield just might take back its due today.

The greens will be perfect today. The rough will be higher. The people will be back. The tournament goes on forever, and the party never ends.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com