Simon Lewis, Bethpage
WAS it just a coincidence that the US Open was being staged a couple of Bubba Watson drives away from Amityville?
That's right, the Long Island, New York, town that spawned the house that gave us “The Amityville Horror” lies not five miles south of Bethpage Black, which just happens to be the location for the forthcoming blockbuster slasher flick “The Ricky Barnes Horror”.
Well, that's the working title. An alternative being currently kicked around at the studio is: “I Can't Believe I Just Saw You Play That Last Round This Summer”.
Barnes was undoubtedly the victim on Monday as a legion of almost undead professional golfers rampaged across Bethpage State Park in bloodthirsty pursuit of the third-round leader.
Yet in what will go down in movie annals as one of the great moments in psychological tension building, just the perception of being stalked by the Phil Mickelson-led Stepford Golfers was enough to send the hapless Barnes into a self-destructive torment, forcing the Californian to mutate into a character even more frightening than his pursuers.
The script is still being written but we'll call him 'The Bogeyman'. It has a certain ring to it after all.
To the lonely and frightened Barnes, his predators seemed to be lying in wait for him everywhere, unseen yet constantly emitting their hideous roars.
As he cowered behind a rules official, shouts of “Phil! Phil! Phil!” and “Get In The Hole!” echoed around him from all parts of the course and yet, against all the best advice, he still insisted on going into the woods, or at least the very tall grass.
Over and over again.
Yet there was still time for one more twist in this taut psychodrama. For like all the best horror stories, the real monster turned out not to be who Barnes expected because all the likely tormentors were being knocked off too in the gruesome bloodbath at the 15th and 17th holes.
So imagine the horror when Barnes turned round on the 18th green and saw that the only possible man to have been playing him and the rest of the field like a fiddle all that time was in fact the man he suspected least. Playing partner Lucas Glover.
It's always the quiet ones.
