After taking early steps to be better prepared for another lunch onslaught like Wednesday’s, Thursday’s rain brought members and guests inside three hours earlier than expected—and with different appetites than had been planned for. Our kitchen suddenly became a short-order diner, scrambling to make a whole new supply of breakfast sandwiches while also filling special orders.

Club & Resort Business Editor Joe Barks, “embedded” as a utility worker on the expanded kitchen staff of Merion Golf Club as the Ardmore, Pa., club hosts the U.S. Open Championship this week, will file behind-the–scenes reports after ending his 10-hour shifts providing whatever support is needed for the high-volume food operation in the members’ tent. Here are some of his impressions and insights after Thursday’s first round:

•  Probably the least surprising, but most welcomed, development during this U.S. Open week was that the doomsday weather scenario predicted for Thursday—which included calls for a tornado, damaging hail, raging floods and seemingly every other conceivable calamity short of fire and famine—instead just proved to be more evidence that meteorology is a fancy name for well-dressed people getting way too much airtime for breathless guesswork.

Thankfully, all the concern and speculation over how Thursday’s predicted weather might dash the careful planning and eager anticipation that went into bringing the tournament back to Merion proved to be unnecessary. But the reality of the three-hour storm delay that actually did transpire posed another new test of the ability, and flexibility, of the membership tent’s kitchen team.

After taking early steps to be better prepared for another lunch onslaught like Wednesday’s, the rain brought members and guests inside three hours earlier than expected—and with different appetites than had been planned for. Breakfast croissants that had been made in small quantities in expectation of light morning business quickly disappeared, and our kitchen suddenly became a short-order diner, scrambling to make a whole new supply of breakfast sandwiches (this time on English muffins) while also filling special orders for various combinations of eggs and bacon.

Filling up members and their guests in this fashion then also created a new consumption pattern for lunch—it was still a busy day, but the volume was spread out more evenly and later into the afternoon, without the hour-plus, full-out “slam” we’d experienced the day before.

• The final numbers that came in for Wednesday showed that its pace of activity was double what we’d started the week with (and Monday was by no means slow), with more than 1,600 transactions, most of which were concentrated into a two-hour lunch period.

•  Membership—and serving members—certainly has its privileges. Before things got too hectic because of the rain delay, the kitchen crew was able to take a quick break to step outside on the members’ tent balcony, which offers a tremendous view of Merion’s 13th hole (a signature par-3 of barely more than 100 yards)—and we did so just in time to see Phil Mickelson drop a remarkable tee shot onto the green that spun back 20 feet to set up his first birdie of his first-round 67 (his round started on the 11th hole).

• Valuable new knowledge gained today (after spotting my uniform with what I thought would be unremovable cherry water ice stains while restocking the ice cream cooler): Chefs’ coats are double-breasted for a practical reason—it’s the fastest and most effective way to “clean” them, simply by rebuttoning the other way.