With the U.S. Open set to tee off in just a few days, I told my wife, Fredanel, that I’ve gained a new appreciation for her.

I reasoned that our experience preparing for the Championship gave me an inkling of what she felt like when she was 8½ months pregnant.

You see, I explained, down at The Pilot we’ve been planning and preparing for more than two years to be the newspaper host for this illustrious event. And now all we can do is wait.

All that nerve-racking anxiety we’ve been going through around here must be what women experience as they go through the final stages of pregnancy, I mused.

Fredanel, the mother of our two young daughters, Jenna and Freddie, threw her head back and laughed heartily for a few moments.

Suddenly, she quit and said, "You have no idea. Besides, that golf tournament will be over in a week. You’re a mother for life."

Being naïve and not knowing I’d trod into that dreaded don’t-even-go-there territory, I continued on in my tortured extended metaphor.

Granted, we at The Pilot won’t be stuck in baby jail for the next three years. But we will be milking the Open for a long time. Twenty years from now, we’ll look back at this moment in time and realize it was a watershed event in Moore County’s history.

The Open will introduce this community to the world. It will allow Moore County to grow – on its own terms and not some out-of-town developers’ – in an intelligent and orderly manner.

In order for this community to be attractive to an out-of-town company, it must be attractive for locals. To that end, this community has expended massive amounts of effort planning for a better school system and more appropriate land uses.

Some of our more cosmetic improvements – all of those pretty flowers – are on display along many of the roadways in Southern Pines and Pinehurst.

We’ve been vigilant at preserving the casual elegance of the area. You won’t see any jungle golf courses or water slides here. If that’s what you’re looking for, then Myrtle Beach is just a couple hours’ drive southeast.

So, if you’re in town for the Open, take an hour away from the golf and visit the people and places that make this county so special. Stroll through the village, downtown Southern Pines, or Sandhills Community College’s gardens. You won’t be disappointed.

I’m as proud as a new father to call the Sandhills home. I’m even more so about what the staff has created here at The Pilot.

These folks lost plenty of sleep and countless weekends to make the paper you’re holding in your hands a reality. It’s been two years in the making.

Our crew, 65 strong, dedicated the last several months to putting out the best newspaper the U.S. Open has ever seen.

That pride will shine brightly throughout our eight morning Champion-ship editions as well as our three regular midday editions of The Pilot.

We’re blazing a new trail for Open coverage. The entire community is confident this Championship will be the standard by which all other U.S. Opens are measured. We hope our coverage of it will too.

Not only will we publish a 56-page daily newspaper focused exclusively on the Open, but we will also offer the community unprecedented live coverage of this historic event.

We’ve partnered with NBC Sports, Pinehurst Resorts, and two internet companies, Total Sports and Golf.com, to broadcast the Championship live via the internet (www.Pinehurst99. com).

Readers will be able to follow every shot by every player with our real-time scoring system – all updated at the lightning-quick intervals of every 10 seconds.

With one foot in the future, we’ll keep the other firmly rooted in the past. As you drive around the area this week, you’ll notice children dressed in turn-of-the-century clothing – not this century, the other one – hawking newspapers.

Those kids are working to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club of the Sandhills, which is the official charity of the Open. All of the money from the sale of the newspapers will go to the Club.

That woefully extended pregnancy metaphor I tried futilely to pull over Fredanel reminded me of something a friend asked me on the golf course the other day:

"If a man says something in the woods and there is no woman around, is he still wrong?"

You bet he is – especially if he’s bone-headed enough to talk about understanding the pains of pregnancy.

Woronoff is publisher of The Pilot.