They’ll Play It Fast and Tight at Open : Golf: Oakmont’s slippery greens and narrow fairways make it “a very unfriendly course.”

They’re hard, they’re fast and they’re the color of Kermit the Frog’s family portrait.

They are the greens at Oakmont Country Club, where the 94th U.S. Open begins today in hot, humid weather guaranteed to curl your hair, stick your shirt to your back and make you feel as uncomfortable as possible while standing over a putt.

These aren’t greens, they’re pressure points. The last time anyone saw something this fast, they were waving a checkered flag at it.

It’s all a little unnerving.

To prepare himself for the Oakmont greens, Jim Gallagher Jr. had this idea: “I’m going home and practice putting by trying to roll the ball down the drain in my bath tub.”

Said Gary Hallberg: “Putting here is like playing pool in the dark.”

To the 159 golfers who begin their four-day march in search of the U.S. Open trophy, there is no question that the tournament will be won on the greens. That’s true, but only if the tournament isn’t lost getting there from the fairway.

Oakmont’s fairways are so narrow that most of the golfers put their drivers in their bags and use three-woods, two-irons or one-irons, thereby gaining in accuracy what they give up in distance.

Tom Watson said Oakmont is going to take a heavy toll on the best golfers in the world this week, unless rain softens up the course.

“It’s a very unfriendly course,” he said. “A lot of golfers are going to be embarrassed--95% of the field doesn’t have a chance. There are going to be more scores in the 90s than the 60s.”

It’s not a pretty picture, but then maybe Watson holds a grudge. He lost two major titles at Oakmont--the 1978 PGA Championship and the 1983 U.S. Open--on the back nine on the last day.

Oakmont’s slippery, sloping greens and suffocatingly tight fairways with dense rough lurking nearby have got some players thinking.

“It’s going to be very, very difficult if we don’t get rain,” Fred Couples said. “These greens are virtually impossible from some spots. If they get hard, you are going to get to these spots all day long.

“You don’t want to be above the pin. How are you going to stop the ball below the pin when it doesn’t stop?”

But there are some bright spots. If Oakmont is deadly, at least it’s going to be a pretty deadly. The U.S. Bureau of Forestry came up with $33,000 to plant annual flowers that are blooming at just the right time.

No foreign player has won the U.S. Open since David Graham of Australia in 1981, but Greg Norman of Australia, Nick Faldo of England, Nick Price of Zimbabwe and Ernie Els of South Africa are considered contenders.

Faldo might have won an Open already, but he lost to Curtis Strange in an 18-hole playoff in 1988 at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass. A victory at Oakmont won’t be any easier, according to Faldo, mainly because of the greens. He stood on one green, he said, and felt oddly relieved.

“Well, I thought at last, ‘This is the flat one,’ ” he said. “I said, ‘Where is the pin?’ and someone told me, ‘It is behind that hump in front, between the two ridges.’ I said, ‘Oh, fine, this is the flat one.’

“So, you know, they are brutal. There are a couple of them out there where you would be 31 feet from the hole and get 30 feet of break. And they are quick. I mean they are quite something.”

Faldo said he considers Oakmont to be the most difficult U.S. Open venue of the seven he has played.

Price said he will have done well if he gets the ball to stop within 15 feet of the hole. From there, putting will be an adventure. “If you don’t get the speed right, you are going to be putting from eight to 10 feet on your return putts,” he said.

Larry Nelson won the last Open at Oakmont in 1983, when there was a lot of grumbling about the length of the rough. It’s five inches in most places, about an inch shorter than in ‘83, but still making it difficult to do anything other than knock it back out in the fairway.

The rough, Nelson said, is a great equalizer. “I don’t care who you are if you are in the rough,” he said.

Norman doesn’t care what anybody says, his shot at winning the Open isn’t that great. “Right now, my golf game is about a 4 1/2 on a scale of 10,” he said.

And so it goes at Oakmont, where optimism is in the bunker. It’s the pessimist’s Open, four days of groaning, 30-foot putts for par, ball-eating rough and balls that still haven’t stopped rolling.

U.S. Open at a Glance

* WHERE: Oakmont Country Club, near Pittsburgh, Pa. This is the seventh U.S. Open at Oakmont.

* WHEN: Play begins today at 4 a.m. PDT and concludes Sunday. If there is a tie, an 18-hole playoff will be held Monday.

* DEFENDING CHAMPION: Lee Janzen.

* TODAY’S TV: ESPN 7:30 a.m.-noon; 2-4 p.m. Highlights on Channel 7 at 11:30 p.m.

* WEATHER FORECAST: Hot and very humid with highs in the 90s and a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon.