They included, of course, shock leader Jerry Kelly and Tiger Woods, whose thrilling Saturday 66 had brought him into joint second place with Masters champion Vijay Singh.

The round was Woods’ last before the Masters in two weeks, when he will be trying to become the first player in golf history to hold all four majors at the same time.

He was affected by the hold-up last season. A storm then left 20 players still to finish and on the Monday morning Woods was beaten to the prestigious title and its massive £776,978 first prize by Hal Sutton by a shot.

Two weeks ago all the talk was of the fact that the world number one had not won this season, though a worst finish of 13th hardly constituted a slump. Now he was looking for his second successive victory, having won the Bay Hill Invitational.

His third round at Sawgrass had enough excitement for a month. An opening bogey left him seven adrift of Kelly, then he birdied the next three holes and on the long 11th he hit a four-iron second to within 18 inches of the flag for a tap-in eagle.

His pitch to the 12th finished even closer, just nine inches, and after making a 22-footer for another birdie at the 16th he looked to have messed his round up with his tee shot on the island green short 17th.

Woods was in the water in the second round and double-bogeyed and he was heading for the same fate when the ball suddenly gripped on the grass and stopped three feet from the lake.

Although massively relieved at that he faced a putt from roughly the same spot as Fred Funk had four-putted moments earlier. It was nearly 50 feet and the last 20 of it was down a slope which made it impossible to stop the ball by the hole.

Woods, however, magically judged the line to perfection and as the ball picked up speed it found the hole and dived in for a birdie two.

‘‘I’ve had that putt before and missed it to the right every time,’’ he said. ‘‘If I’d missed it would have been off the green easily.’’

He did bogey the last, but Kelly’s three-putt bogey on the 17th from a third of the distance Woods faced brought the gap back to two.

Singh’s 70 put him alongside Woods on nine under and, with all due respect to Kelly, who has never won a US Tour title, looked the biggest danger.

Only 11 players had done their week’s work when play was suspended.

Ian Woosnam was among them, a level par 72 leaving him 11-over-par and joint 71st of the 75 survivors, but Nick Faldo had just chipped from one side of the 18th green into rough on the other side when the siren sounded.

He was five-over-par at the time and needed to hole his second chip for a par four and another round of 72.

The only European in the hunt for the title at what is regarded as golf’s unofficial fifth major was German Bernhard Langer.

The 43-year-old, chasing his first victory since the 1997 German Masters, was seven-under-par and four adrift of Kelly.

Colin Montgomerie had just turned in 34 to stand one under for the tournament when he had to return to the clubhouse to seek shelter from the rain, while Darren Clarke was level par after eight and Padraig Harrington two over with eight to play.

American Joel Edwards did not appear for the final round because of something that happened at his very first hole on Thursday.

Following a third round 77 Edwards went to tournament director Ben Nelson and informed him that ‘‘after several nights of contemplation and soul-searching’’ he was sure he had hit a moving ball on the green over 48 hours earlier.

In effect the 39-year-old therefore disqualified himself because the score he signed for in his first round, a level par 72, did not include the penalty.