When play resumed at 10am, Willett – who carded an opening 66 to lie one behind overnight leader Dustin Johnson – took full advantage of the relatively benign conditions with birdies on the second and fifth to claim the outright lead.

The 27-year-old was joined on eight under when Zach Johnson also picked up shots on the fifth and sixth, but after Willett holed from 25 feet for birdie on the ninth and just five feet on the 10th, Johnson three-putted the 11th and dropped another shot on the 12th.

Padraig Harrington was level for the day and the tournament at the turn, but birdies at 13 and 14 mean he is now eight shots off the lead at two under, with two holes to play.

As the wind strengthened, that gave Willett a three-shot lead over Dustin Johnson, who was now not due out until 5:48pm alongside Masters and US Open champion Jordan Spieth due to the earlier delay.

With the last group scheduled to tee off at 7:27pm, many players will have to return on Saturday to complete their second rounds.

But R&A chief executive Peter Dawson insisted that significant changes would not be made to the order of play, unlike last year at Royal Liverpool when a two-tee start was used for the first time in Open history due to a bad weather forecast for Saturday’s third round.

“[We’ve] only done it once at Hoylake,” Dawson told the BBC. “The prospect of changing it during competition and doing a two-tee start is not something we are going to do. The order you play the holes in on a links course is very important.

“The forecast is for very strong winds so it is a very tough course today and tomorrow, but because we have had so much rain it’s nowhere near as fiery as it can be so I’m very hopeful that (wind) won’t affect play.

“Our target is to finish on Sunday. We do have the ability to go into Monday (the last time that happened was at Lytham in 1988), but we certainly hope not to.”

South Africa's Jaco van Zyl hit the opening tee shot at 6:32am and had a three-foot putt for birdie before play was suspended.

“It was pretty bad when we started and it had really set in by the time we hit our second shots,” Van Zyl said after completing a 69 to finish four over par. “By the time we got to the first green it was literally unplayable.

“We were lingering around the green for about five minutes before they eventually called it. They tried to squeegee but water was rising quicker than they could get it away.

“It is not what you expect but it is the Open Championship so it is slightly different. There was no mention of not starting play. We got on the tee at 6.30 and off we went, hit our first shots and hit it on the green for two and then when we got to the green it was waterlogged.

“We had the option to putt out but we all stopped, the hole was literally full with water.”