FARMINGDALE, N.Y. - For a few moments Saturday, the true star of this U.S. Open - the radar map - ceded the stage in favor of a couple of guys who could walk into any crowded restaurant in Manhattan and get neither recognized by anyone nor seated without a reservation. The top of the leader board, somehow not obscured by rain, featured Ricky Barnes and Lucas Glover, two players who between them had made the cut once in seven completely anonymous Open appearances, yet appeared to master the rather docile Black Course at Bethpage State Park.

Barnes's lead at the midway point was one shot over Glover, and he did so with a very un-Open-like 8-under-par 132. No one, in 109 Opens, has posted a lower 36-hole total. Had these two names with those two scores popped up at, say, the John Deere Classic, no one would have blinked. But this is the U.S. Open, and in a normal U.S. Open, Tiger Woods's two-round score of 3-over 143 would likely be within a few shots of contention, not within one shot of the cut.

“Different,” Woods said, “than most U.S. opens.”

Those two developments - Barnes leading the tournament on the strength of a brilliant second-round 65, and Woods sneaking into the final two rounds by a single shot - would qualify as significant surprises. But the biggest surprise of Saturday - which featured the completion of the second round and the very beginning of the third - was that play was not stopped until after 7 p.m.

Thursday's rain - which delayed almost all of the first round and set up this race for a Sunday-night finish, which the United States Golf Association hopes to achieve - not only upset the flow of the tournament, but it upset Bethpage Black itself. When this course hosted the Open for the first time in 2002, Woods held the second-round lead at 5 under par.

But seven years ago, Woods's lead was by three shots over second-place Padraig Harrington, the only other player under par at the midway point. This year, 15 players broke par after 36 holes. How much easier is this tournament playing than a typical Open? Friday, Mike Weir threatened the all-time record for low score in one round of a major tournament, missing by a shot and posting 64. Saturday, Glover had a 20-foot putt to match the record 63 - accomplished four times in the Open. He missed it, but posted the second 64 in as many days

“If you would have told me I would have been 8 under and had only a one-shot lead, I would have said, ‘You're kidding me,”' said Barnes, who has never even finished in the top 10 in a PGA Tour event. “But I'll take it. It was solid play, and I'm happy with the position I'm at.”

It is, simply, a position Barnes has never enjoyed. After a successful career at the University of Arizona, he won the U.S. Amateur in 2002. He has won nothing since. Not on the PGA Tour, on which he is a 28-year-old rookie this year. And not on the Nationwide Tour, which he played for five seasons full-time. That kind of start to a professional career, which seemed to be filled with promise, is unsettling.

“I obviously thought, after my college career, I'd be out here (on tour) right away,” Barnes said. “I'd be lying if I said I wasn't really (ticked) off the first two or three years, and seeing other guys that you played with getting out there and playing well.”

Friday and Saturday, when Barnes played his first two rounds, he played exceptionally well. He made one bogey in 36 holes, and that kind of grinding performance typically seizes the lead at the Open. The difference: He added nine birdies. Officials from the USGA, its meticulous course left defenseless, must have shuddered in their blue blazers.

“You could be pretty aggressive,” Woods said. “The only thing you have to worry (about) is spinning the ball back too much. Even with 6-irons and 5-irons, balls are ripping back.”

Woods was, indeed, aggressive. He just couldn't get anything going. After opening with a 74 and starting his second round on the 10th hole, he got it as low as 2 over for the tournament but missed an eight-foot birdie putt at 16, a 10-footer for par at 3, and another makeable par putt at 9, his final hole of the day, finishing with bogey.

“Unfortunately, my score doesn't reflect how I've been playing,” Woods said. “It is what it is. But you never know. I've got 36 more holes over the next, probably, three days, and it's one of those things where if I keep plugging along, just like any U.S. Open ... and make a birdie here and there, and we'll see where it ends up.”

There are, though, two potential problems with that line of thinking. First, Woods has never overcome an 11-shot, 36-hole deficit to win a major. Only one player - Lou Graham, in 1975 at Medinah - has done so to win an Open. That deficit might be too much.

The other problem is this: Making a birdie here and there, on a Bethpage track that is shockingly tame, just might not be enough. Woods barely started his third round, while Barnes and Glover never even got back on the course before play was called for the day.

That, then, would leave Sunday, and what could be a grueling finish. But at least for a day, the radar gave way to the players, and the players turned the U.S. Open into a how-low-can-you-go birdie-fest.