It's not that Mike Miles isn't happy to be at Bethpage Black, playing in the U.S. Open; it's that he's not just happy to be there.

"I'm playing really well," said Miles, a 47-year-old assistant pro at Virginia Country Club in Long Beach, California. "I expect to finish somewhere in the top 20, to be honest with you."

He's played in the U.S. Open before, after all. Once. In 1987. He missed the cut.

There are thirteen players in the Open field who weren't born at the time of Miles's last Open round. But that doesn't bother the soft-spoken teaching pro. "I had a great practice round yesterday playing with three guys from Long Beach who are playing on the PGA Tour," he said on Wednesday, referring to John Merrick, John Mallinger, and Peter Tomasulo, all of whom are in the field as well, "and I had a great round, I hit the ball fantastic, I looked like the best player in the group and the youngest player in the group."

Miles knows a lot about the confidence it takes to play on the PGA Tour, from the years he struggled to keep it. He had been an All-America at Long Beach State, then got his Tour card at age 23 in 1986. He played in 25 events, making just four cuts for a total of $4,492 in prize money. Two years later, he passed through Q School and regained his card for 1989, this time making eight of 25 cuts and earning $33,475. His best finish on the PGA Tour was a tie for tenth at the BellSouth Atlanta Golf Classic in 1989.

His other U.S. Open was at the Olympic Club. "Back then it was Nicklaus, Watson, that was the era. The stage is bigger now - golf has grown so much since then - but it feels very much the same: a lot of pressure; there were three or four guys that were supposed to win; everybody else was just going to see if they could get a little taste of it." The story of that Open was Tom Watson's return to his collegiate stomping grounds, but it was Scott Simpson, part of the everybody-else contingent, who won.

After losing his Tour card for the 1990 season, Miles played on golf's minor-league circuit (now called the Nationwide Tour), then quit in 1993. "I didn't even own a set of clubs for four or five years," he recalled. "I left the game because I was no longer competing. I wasn't making enough money." He turned his competitive energies to amateur car racing, and worked in racing in Texas for a few years. But golf drew him back.

"I don't show it, and I think most golfers don't, but I'm way more competitive than most people," Miles says. "And you have to be that way. Every guy in this tournament - you can take the college guys, or me, or everybody in between, including Tiger - he's wired differently than the average person. I never knew that when I was [on Tour]; I thought you just practiced hard and got better and the rest is just history. But look at Tiger - he burns a hole in people. You get around him, and you're gonna light on fire if you don't have the right clothing on. And that's what I missed when I quit playing. I didn't miss anything but the competition."

Golf is a game for optimists, many of them cockeyed if not downright delusional. We all know first-tee jitters and the sinking sensation of a sclaffed iron or a butchered putt, but we also know the feeling of the rare pure shot that expresses our true golfing self - or so we think. We're going to play the best round of our life someday; why not today? And if not today, why not tomorrow?

"The dream is really what it's all about," Miles says about the appeal of the game. "It starts all over when you wake up in the morning."

The U.S. Open is a battleground for Tiger and Phil and Jack and Arnie and Sam and Ben, but it's also a place for dreamers. It's open: if you've got a handicap index of 1.4 - that is, if you're very good on your home course, whether or not you can crack the closed shop that is the PGA Tour - a check for $150 gets you into local qualifying. Nine thousand and eleven golfers entered this year; twenty-nine of them survived eighteen holes of local qualifying and thirty-six on the sectional level to get to Bethpage.

Miles shot the low round at the Industry Hills, CA qualifier, then birdied the first hole in a three-for-two-spots playoff after 36 holes in the sectionals. And now he's back at the U.S. Open for the first time in twenty-two years. Having already beaten the 300-to-1 odds just to get there, Miles sees no reason to put a ceiling on his expectations. "I'm as good as anybody in the field," he said Wednesday. "Including Tiger. I can't carry the ball off the tee as far as he can, but I drove it yesterday better than he's probably ever driven it. It was a practice round, but I basically hit it down the center of just about every fairway. He doesn't do that. I've got a leg up on him if I swing the club like that, so that equals out his - who knows, probably 50 yards of carry, or maybe 30 or 40. I need to realize that and believe it, which I do. I'm not just saying that. I feel like 25, when you think you can do it all."

He smiles. "That's that delusion of grandeur that keeps you trying."

On a sodden Thursday, Miles's opening tee shot hugged the right side of the fairway, settling safely past the dogleg. He had sand saves on the first and third holes, and was even par when the horn sounded to suspend play. Seventy-seven players completed at least one hole; eleven are at par or better. When he wakes up in the morning on Friday, he'll be headed to the fourth tee to continue his round.

Why not today?