Take the world's toughest municipal golf course, pack it with more than 50,000 of the world's most demonstrative golf fans and add the world's top two playing attractions and you have a recipe for chaos.
The U.S. Open Championship returns to Bethpage Black this week, and the story essentially picks up where it left off seven years ago. In 2002, Tiger Woods walked away in the Gotham gloaming with his second major victory in a row. Runner-up Phil Mickelson left with the hearts of every fan in the New York metropolitan area.
At the Bethpage reunion, Woods is again the most likely to succeed while Mickelson retains the title as the most popular. Their stories totally eclipse the other 154 players in the field. If the USGA had opted to pair them together again in the first two rounds as they did last year at Torrey Pines, it could have gotten out of hand.
If fate intervenes on the weekend, it might anyway.
Through 12 consecutive U.S. Opens in the Tiger era we've seen plenty of strange things.
We've seen Tom Lehman complete an Open slam of frustration from the final pairing.
We've seen Payne Stewart cover about 50 feet in his last three putts at Pinehurst to punctuate a career tragically cut short a few months later.
We've seen Retief Goosen miss a 2-foot par putt on one course (Southern Hills), make miles of par saves on another (Shinnecock) and barely be able to make pars on a third (Pinehurst).
We've seen the USGA present unfair greens three times (Olympic, Southern Hills and Shinnecock) that all played a significant part in the outcome. We've seen them make the fairways so tight and unreachable that players were actually aiming to hit narrow walkways (Bethpage).
We've seen a topless woman present roses to Jim Furyk on the 11th green at Olympia Fields. We've seen Furyk and Woods fall to a chain smoker at Oakmont. We've seen Mickelson and Colin Montgomerie incapable of making even playoff-clinching bogeys on the final hole at Winged Foot.
We've seen Woods lap the field by 15 incomparable shots at Pebble Beach. We've seen 30,000 people show up to watch an aging journeyman with a bad back nearly beat a one-legged Woods in a 19-hole playoff.
But nothing compares on the crazy meter like what was witnessed at Bethpage State Park seven years ago -- at least outside the ropes just nine months after 9/11. The fans who flock to the Black are unlike any others, even by New York standards. It's as if decades spent camping in parking lots overnight to get punished by the course have turned them into golf's version of Cameron Crazies. They are loud, often rude and utterly uncontainable.
Everyone remembers how the galleries treated young Spaniard Sergio Garcia in 2002. Stuck in a routine of re-gripping spasms, Garcia was taunted at every turn by the Long Island masses who counted his fidgets and hollered for him to "hit it already" while the kid was trying to win the U.S. Open alongside Woods. They even hassled his girlfriend at the time, tennis star Martina Hingis.
What you might not remember is a bizarro scene that took place late Sunday afternoon as the drama was reaching crescendo. With the leaders reaching the critical home stretch, a thunderstorm swept across Long Island and forced a suspension of play. As lightning bolts peppered the area, security and tournament officials pleaded with the fans to exit the metal bleachers surrounding the finishing holes. In the ultimate display of risk-reward ever seen on a golf course, those raucous and chanting fans stubbornly refused to give up their coveted seats for the show and lived to tell about it.
Just nuts.
Those fans will be expecting similar electricity this week from the two principle characters. The last time Woods and Mickelson were seen together at a major, they dazzled then fizzled in an unbelievable Sunday pairing at the Masters Tournament. Woods stalked off angry while Mickelson shrugged off with his arm around his wife, satisfied with an exhilarating effort that came up short.
Now Woods comes in fresh off a flawless final round at the Memorial that was so clinically impressive it prompted tournament host Jack Nicklaus to call this week Open and shut.
"I suspect No. 15 will come for Tiger Woods in about two weeks," Nicklaus said of Tiger's next step toward the Bear's record 18 major championships.
And Mickelson comes in with a heavy heart that the New York galleries are certain to try to lift with a sea of pink clothing and ribbons. A month ago it was announced that Amy Mickelson was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Mickelson went on a brief hiatus. After further tests established a treatment plan that will start July 1, Mickelson opted to play in Memphis this week and the U.S. Open before shutting it down indefinitely to support his wife's cancer fight.
"Yeah, we're certainly scared," Mickelson admitted this week. "I don't think it's going to affect how I play. I mean, I'm going to still, you know, play aggressively. It's just that, you know, off the course I've never felt something like this."
While Woods will be the odds-on favorite as he always is at major championships, Mickelson will certainly be the crowd favorite as he has been every time he's teed it up in the New York area since Bethpage 2002. He disappointed his flock with two more seconds at Shinnecock and Winged Foot and rode their support to a PGA Championship win at Baltusrol in 2005. Now he'll try to ride the wave of emotions to a title that's proved the most elusive in his career quest.
"In 2002, Bethpage, it was an emotional experience for me then," Mickelson said. "I anticipate it being an emotional experience playing this year's U.S. Open. My quest is to win my first U.S. Open after four seconds, numerous close calls, me caring about this tournament so much. But right now I'm just fortunate that I'm going to be able to play, and I hope to play well. I know that after that, I got something going on that's more important and takes my mind off it."
With a saner setup mixed with insane fans, Bethpage has all of the ingredients for one helluva sequel.
Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.
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