For four days each year, golfers who battle to break 100 get to watch the world’s best endure similar struggles.
The face you make when inevitably slicing a driver, chunking a wedge, missing a 3-footer is now plastered on the pros as they try to figure a way out of the U.S. Open’s devilish rough.
“There’s sort of a NASCAR mentality. You come to watch the wrecks and you hope nobody gets hurt.” said the Golf Channel’s David Feherty, whose new interview show — “Feherty” — premieres on Tuesday night.
“I think it’s nice to see a golf course that’s extremely difficult played in hot and dry conditions where it’s hard to hit fairways. But I wouldn’t want to see it every week.”
Neither would the players. When asked who the favorite was, Lee Westwood half-joked, “the course.”
That would be Congressional, where this year’s U.S. Open teed off yesterday. Phil Mickelson spoke of the high-risk, low-reward of the course that punishes aggressive players.
Dating back to Shinnecock Hills in 2004, the cumulative score of the past seven winners is 1-over par. When Ernie Els won at Congressional in 1997, he finished at 4-under, but it’s expected to be more challenging this year.
“It’s been very dry here [Bethesda, Md.], so it wouldn’t surprise me to see a lot of those youngsters be
50 yards over the back of the green,” said Feherty, who is working as an analyst for the Golf Channel, which has 50 hours of pre- and post-round coverage throughout the tournament’s four days.
“We are going to get some lies in the rough here that are going to come out like scalded cats. They aren’t going to understand. It’s going to be the sort of week where you are going to have to examine the lie and read the lie. It’s really the older players that are more able to do that, so I think that gives them an advantage.”
But Feherty disputes the idea that the U.S. Open is the “toughest test in golf,” as some have dubbed it. The Belfast native said that honor belongs to the Masters, which weeds out the pretenders and rewards the contenders.
“The Masters is the ultimate test of golf because the recovery shot is alive and well,” Feherty said. “Somebody hits it into the trees or offline, there are ways to go for shots, look for openings and usually the players try which makes it compelling.
“The U.S. Open really levels the playing field. It is an extremely difficult tournament to win, but it reduces players to the same level to a certain extent. When you hit it in the rough, pretty much everybody has to play the same shot — hack it out.”
Just like you have to do at your home course.
justin.terranova@nypost.com