Unlike the Masters, the U.S. Open is golf's movable feast. Befitting a national championship, it travels from coast to coast and from north to south. But it has been contested more often on courses in the New York City area than on courses in any other region. When the 109th Open begins Thursday at Bethpage Black on Long Island, it will be the 22nd Open in the New York City area, compared to 13 in the Chicago suburbs and 10 in the entire state of California. And just as Broadway theater stages have featured the best of the best actors, a New York Open has often been won by the best of the best golfers. Of the previous 21 New York Opens, 10 were won by World Golf Hall of Fame members: Jack Nicklaus, Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Raymond Floyd, Hale Irwin, Billy Casper, Jerome Travers and Willie Anderson. Five other winners are potential Hall of Famers: Tiger Woods, Corey Pavin, Fuzzy Zoeller, Retief Goosen and Geoff Ogilvy. If Woods were to win at Bethpage Black as he did in 2002, he not only would join Nicklaus and Jones as a four-time Open champion, he would join them as a two-time champion of a New York Open. Nicklaus won at Baltusrol in 1967 and 1980, Jones at Inwood in 1923 and Winged Foot in 1929. Three of golf's most revered names -- Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Sam Snead -- are not on the winners' list, but they never had much of a chance. The Open was not held in the New York region from 1937 to 1953, and was not held at all from 1942 to 1945 because of World War II -- an era when Hogan, Nelson and Snead were in their prime. Anderson, a four-time champion of a century ago, won in 1903 at Baltusrol, in Springfield, N.J., which is as close to, say, Times Square as Winged Foot in Westchester County and much closer than the other two New York courses in the recent Open rotation -- Shinnecock Hills and Bethpage Black on Long Island. One of the eight New York-area Open courses has moved and another no longer exists. Fresh Meadow, where Sarazen won in 1932, moved in 1946 from Flushing to Lake Success. The Englewood Golf Club in New Jersey, where George Sargent won in 1909, was dug up nearly three decades ago to make way for Interstate 95 and clusters of condominiums not far from the George Washington Bridge. Opens in the New York area have reflected golf's history and growth, beginning in 1896 at the second U.S. Open when James Foulis, a transplanted Scot from St. Andrews, won at Shinnecock Hills. Six years later, Laurie Auchterlonie, another Scot from St. Andrews, was the first to break 80 in all four rounds while winning at the Garden City Golf Club. Travers, a New York amateur, took the 1915 Open at Baltusrol, and Jones, golf's most celebrated amateur, won in 1923 at Inwood across Jamaica Bay from what is now Kennedy International Airport. In 1929 at Winged Foot, Jones holed a curling 12-foot putt on the final green to force a 36-hole playoff with Al Espinosa. Shooting 72-69, Jones won it by 23 strokes. After Sarazen, the inventor of the sand wedge, won at Fresh Meadow in 1932, Tony Manero won on Baltusrol's Upper Course in 1936. In 1954 on the Lower Course, the first Open with fairway gallery ropes, Ed Furgol won after a hooked tee shot into the tree-lined 18th fairway of the Upper Course on his final hole. At Winged Foot in 1959, Casper enhanced his reputation as a superb putter, needing only 114 putts, including 31 one-putt greens, and only one three-putt green. Eight years later, Nicklaus, with a final-round 65 at Baltusrol, held off Arnold Palmer, who shot 69, to win by four. In 1980, with Jack Is Back lettering on the leader board near the 18th green, Nicklaus defeated Isao Aoki by two strokes. Irwin survived Winged Foot's severe rough in 1974 with a seven-over-par 287, and in 1984 Zoeller routed Greg Norman in a playoff there, 67 to 75. Two years later, in a return to Shinnecock Hills after 90 years, Floyd won a shootout with a final-round 66. At Baltusrol in 1993, Lee Janzen won with a record-tying four rounds in the 60s, then Pavin won at Shinnecock Hills in 1995. After Woods edged Phil Mickelson by three shots at Bethpage Black in 2002, Goosen prevailed at Shinnecock Hills in 2004, winning by two after Mickelson had a double bogey on the short next-to-last hole. In 2006 Ogilvy won at Winged Foot after Mickelson, leading by one, sliced his final-hole drive off a hospitality tent into the rough, then hit a tree en route to a double-bogey. After having hosted three Opens in five years and now four in eight, the New York area is not likely to get another until 2017 at the earliest. But at Bethpage Black this week the history of the New York Open will be enriched by one of the best of the best golfers, if not by the best of the best himself. 