Let me say first of all, that whatever you've heard, I am not a brute.

I'm also not a tease, and I'm not a flirt.

I think I'm pretty straightforward; what you see is what you get. And I've never treated anyone differently than he treated me.

I'm tough, sure, but I think I'm fair. And I'm not as big as I look on TV; the camera adds quite a few yards. I've got six sisters who are bigger than I am; it's not my fault that they're - forgive me, girls - easier.

I'm the fifteenth hole at Bethpage Black, and if you want to dance with me, you'd better bring your 'A' game.

The last time the Open came to visit, ­­­I was the hardest hole the pros played all year. They averaged 4.6 strokes on my par-four self, a cumulative 273 over par. In the first round this week they were 87 over, a little better than last time, but I've been feeling a bit under the weather.

I had six with Tiger on Friday, and it seemed to take a lot out of him. He bogeyed two of the last three, and I don't know how much I'll be seeing him after today.

There are three par-fours here that are longer than 500 yards. I'm not one of them. When Rees Jones gave me a little nip/tuck, he built a new back tee - but there's a grandstand on it this year, leaving me at a trim 458.

My fairway is nice and flat, mowed so it has a gentle bend in it. I hold my green up high, about sixty feet up a hill, and I wear the grass around my neck long and swirly. There are a couple of bunkers at the front and side of the hill; Rees moved them closer to my green, but even he says, "I didn't do as much to 15 as I did to the other holes, because it didn't need it." Not like the amount of work some others have had done, not that I want to name names or anything (I'm looking at you, 9).

What's so tough about me?

"My focus on that hole, the difficulty would be the tee shot," says Paul Casey. "The fairway is nicely defined with the way the rough is cut. But the way it's angled, it's all about line and distance off the tee...I think the fairway is more difficult to hit than the green."

So hitting my green isn't the problem, right?

"It's really hard to do, coming in there with a long iron to an elevated green," says Tiger Woods. "Generally it's going to bounce over the back if you land it up on top. But this year at least you have a chance. It's softer; if you land the ball on top it has a chance of stopping."

But once you reach my green, everything's ok, isn't it?

"The 15th green is by far the slopiest green on the golf course," says Mike Davis, the USGA's Senior Director of Rules and Competitions. "It's got a kind of lower front area with a big ridge running through it, and then the back portion of the green is the only place we can put the hole location. It is much more severe than the other 17 greens at Bethpage - we treat it much differently than the other 17." Flatterer!

Treat me right, stick to the straight and narrow, put the ball on the short grass and you'll hear me purr. From the fairway, you can hit any kind of club into the green and it'll stay, thanks to the moisturizer I've been wearing since Thursday. Anthony Kim drove down the middle, hit up to the top level, and sank a putt from twelve feet with two feet of break. Easy. Stuart Appleby drove in the rough, laid up to the fairway at the bottom of the hill, flipped a wedge to a foot, par. I appreciated the respect.

But if you're in the rough, and you try to take advantage of me, I'll slap you down. Tiger, sweetheart, last time around you played me in one under par for four rounds, but you shouldn't've gotten too cute on your running chip from my greenside rough; I swatted that approach back and made you try it again. Ernie Els is just one of several who hit pitches from the front of my green that flew clear over the back. Yes, I know the rough around the fringe is inconsistent; it's a hole's prerogative to change her mind.

I'm comfortable with my place in the world. I follow a pair of potential birdie holes, the par-five 13th and short par-three 14th, and you have to reset your thinking when you meet me, realizing again that par will be a good score.

But I'm worth it, worth crossing the street for.

As Geoff Ogilvy put it, "When you cross over the road to get to the 15th tee, that's a pretty impressive moment of the day. There's not many golf courses where you walk into a place you can see all the last four holes in front of you. It does feel like you go on an adventure and you come back for the crescendo to the finish."