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Ben Roethlisberger goes deep on number 10. ROBERT A. DURKIN

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Four almost-regular Joes teed it up at Bethpage Black last Friday. Regular, that is, if you call winning two super bowls, laying claim to being the greatest basketball player ever or being this year’s hottest teen heartthrob “regular.” But that was the cast of characters on the first tee last Friday as Ben Rothlisberger, Michael Jordan, and Justin Timberlake got together to test their golf mettle against the legendary Black.

Oh, there was also some guy named Larry. Not Bird, who had the good sense to stay out of this one, but Giebelhausen.

Larry Giebelhausen actually was there as the proverbial everyman, a 58-year-old sacrificial lamb whose clever six-word “essay” on why he deserved to play the Black (“I’m a cop. I’ll shoot low.”) earned him the dubious honor of being the fourth ring in this particular Golf Digest-USGA three-ring circus.

Despite a driving early morning rain, a good sized crowd assembled to watch three celebrities and a contest winner pit their somewhat suspect handicap indexes against what the organizers said were to be U.S. Open conditions.

Superintendents say you can control everything but the weather, and Bethpage super Craig Currier was getting very little in the way of cooperation from Mother Nature as he and his crew worked feverishly to prepare for the week’s onslaught of not only the world’s best players, but some 100,000 spectators, media and support personnel.

They continued to squeegee greens and tee boxes throughout the day on Friday, even as the players and spectators made their way around the course. One had to have a bit of sympathy for Currier, who, in addition to reworking the course, extending greens, building tee boxes and installing new bunkers, was asked to get his course ready for a made-for-TV event three days prior to the start of the Open. It’s a little like asking Daniel Boulud to host a dinner party while he’s in the midst of opening a new restaurant. But don’t lose too much sleep over Currier (I’m sure he’s losing enough on his own these days), because the hardworking, likable fellow is generally regarded as the “best Open guy out there.”

Much has been made recently of the official shift in USGA philosophy with regard to course set up, both last year at Torrey Pines and again this year at Bethpage. So what greeted the celebrities was a somewhat, and I say somewhat, different Black than what Tiger and company saw seven years ago. Golf course architect and “Open Doctor” Rees Jones, working in conjunction with USGA Director of Rules and Competitions Mike Davis, and the aforementioned Currier, have conspired to produce a “kinder, gentler” Bethpage. Sort of.

But do not be misled by all the talk of graduated rough, multiple tee boxes and risk reward decision making. Davis, when speaking to the media about the changes back in May, used one word that gave lie to any notion of the USGA going soft on the pros: “Having said that, since we do set it up to where it’s this difficult, believe me, folks ... it is a brutally difficult golf course.”

Brutal. You suppose he just pulled that word out his golf hat? I don’t think so. And just so as to eliminate any doubt about the significance of that expression, here is what a fellow named Tiger had to say in a telephone conference call with the assembled media: “Well, Bethpage Black, if it was set up the way we played the Open every day, I don’t think anybody would play golf anymore. It’s brutal, the way we play it.” Brutal. And that’s how the best player on the planet sees it.

Think of what your response would be if one of your golfing buddies called you up and said: “Hey Al, We’re going to go out to Montauk and get brutalized. Wanna join us?”

Mike Davis is a man who lives by the measured approach. He has to. It’s practically a job requirement at the USGA. Just make a cursory review of the USGA Course Setup Philosophy Statement. Its fourteen points and four paragraphs are as much a manifesto as a “how-to” manual, and its language leaves little doubt that the organization takes its “philosophy” with all the earnestness of an adjunct existentialist in search of tenure.

Of particular interest to viewers of the Open, not to mention the players, is the document’s coda, which I quote here: “Each hole also will have two distinct cuts in the primary rough. Generally speaking, a ball that barely trickles into the primary rough won’t be as severely punished as one that misses the fairway by 15 yards. There is no target score for a U.S. Open. While the final score at some U.S. Open sites will be at or near par, the USGA does not try to formulate a course setup that will only produce a winning score of at or near even par.” Uh-huh.