This week, the best golfers can feel like the rest of us.

It’s U.S. Open week in the golf world. I will be watching when I can, on ESPN and NBC.

Starting today, golf fans will savor the sight of the traditional red wicker baskets atop the pins on the greens of famed Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa. No flags fluttering in the wind here.

The U.S. Open is about those kinds of traditions as it rotates through the best and toughest golf courses in the country. Unique is good. Difference are embraced, from the sign that warns golfers of the tough test before the first tee at Long Island’s extremely public Bethpage Black to the waves that crash along the shores of Pebble Beach at the extremely toney but still public layout on the Monterey Peninsula.

Merion’s yardage is short by today’s major tournament standards, especially with new club and ball technology leading to big hitters crashing drives that travel 350 yards. But the rough will be wet and high, the fairways will be narrow, the greens will be slick, and the the Philly fans will be boisterous. Those big bashers will keep the driver in the bag but for a handful of holes.

The U.S. Open is the great equalizer. The governing USGA wants par to be a great score in a PGA world where birdies and eagles rule.

Us regular Joe’s and Jane’s can watch the best golfers in the world sweat over bad lies and tough approaches and tricky pin placements. Like we do on far easier courses.

I’ve seen them squirm and then pull off incredible shots in person twice, at Rochester’s Oak Hill in 1989 and at Long Island’s Shinnecock in 1995. Curtis Strange won the former and Corey Pavin survived the latter, two strategists who prevailed with equal parts determination and talent. To watch the pros survive and thrive on those courses was a golfing thrill.

This week, I’ll be rooting for Phil Mickelson to take his first U.S. Open. America’s smiling Phil is more of a dark horse than a favorite as a 42-year-old with a well-publicized case of psoriatic arthritis making it tough on his body and that now-mythic meltdown at Winged Foot on the very last hole in 2006 still haunting his thoughts.

Phil outside of Philly. It would make a nice story.

It would also be a great life lesson. Persevere. Persist. Perform.