The U.S. Open is set to start today, and we keep reading the same stories about America’s golf championship. 1. Tiger Woods is a lock to win. 2. Phil Mickelson is the sentimental favorite. 3. Bethpage Black is the most difficult course ever invented.

More of this would be good.

I’m OK with the first two. Yeah, Tiger will probably take over on Sunday. And, yeah, of course everyone is rooting for a generally likable guy in Phil Mickelson, whose wife is dealing with breast cancer.

The last angle feels overly dramatic for my liking. Golf Digest recently ranked the top 100 public courses in the United States. The U.S. Open’s most popular host site, Pebble Beach, was No. 1. Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, which will host the 2010 PGA Championship, is No. 3. And Bethpage Black is No. 5.

A quick story about Bethpage before I drill home my point that the course is like everything else in New York — overrated due to its geographical location …

My friend from Boston is marrying a girl from Long Island. Her dad’s favorite course is Bethpage Black. If my friend was to golf with his future father-in-law on any other course in the country, he’d beat him. But when he goes to visit the future in-laws in New York, his future father-in-law refuses to let him play with him. He even talks down to him with remarks like, “One day, when you get your game together, I’ll let you play the black course with me.”

I smile every time I think of that story. A New Yorker convincing a New England native that he hasn’t experienced anything until he’s experienced it in New York.

Look, we understand, Bethpage is a difficult course. But U.S. Open courses are meant to be difficult. The fairways are supposed to be narrow. The rough is supposed to be long. And every misplaced shot is supposed to be severely punished. Yeah, the scores at the last U.S. Open at Bethpage were inflated, but it poured down rain for the first two days of the tournament.

From a New Yorker’s perspective, Bethpage Black is like everything else in New York. You haven’t seen a baseball game until you’ve been to “The Stadium”. You haven’t been to “The City” until you’ve been in the heart of New York. You haven’t seen passionate sports fans until you’ve been to The Big Apple. And you haven’t won anything, until you’ve won it 26 times.

My friend’s dad dismisses his golf skills almost as quickly as Yankee fans dismiss the Red Sox. Yes, Dustin Pedroia is nice, but imagine what it would be like to cheer for Jeter. Jonathan Papelbon is OK, but Mariano is the best closer in the game. There’s only one problem for New York fans: When we sort through all the mystique and aura, 99 percent of the people would take Pedroia and Papelbon over Jeter and Rivera.

So when you tune into the golf coverage this weekend, you’ll hear things like, “This crowd is really responding to Phil Mickelson, and that’s crazy considering it’s a New York crowd.” You might even hear, “It’s hard enough to win a major championship, but it’s even harder to win it in New York.”

Ignore those sentiments. It’s golf. There’s no such thing as a New York crowd in golf. And it’s no harder to win a tournament in Long Island than Pebble Beach.

So if you’re scoring at home this weekend, root for Phil Mickelson to beat Tiger on Sunday. Root for good weather so that we don’t have to hear about how Bethpage is the hardest course in the history of man all weekend. And root for my friend’s future father-in-law to take him out on the black course on Monday so that he can get the schooling he deserves.

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