BY FRANK SCANDALE

SPECIAL TO NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

“WATCH THE BALL!!!!!” pro golf Jim Furyk screamed like he’d consumed a case of his own endorsed product, 5-Hour Energy.

Hunched close to the ground off the 18th fairway and behind a tree at The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus last Sunday, Furyk was in trouble on the final hole, trying to finish as close to the top as possible as part of the FedEx point race.

I happened to be close enough to see his neck veins protrude like tree roots because of my marshal status. In fact, if I were any closer, I’d be stepping on the ball like one of my marshal colleagues nearly did as a gang of us volunteers attempted to rope off and push back a pulsating, jacked-up crowd who had been out all day on the sunny course, a good portion of them perhaps enjoying an adult beverage or 12.

It was like putting your back up against the ocean at LBI after a storm exploded hundreds of miles off shore and the waves just kept pounding. Except waves don’t yell, “JIMMY, HIT THE CRAP OUT OF THE BALL, JIMMY!!!!”

Or something close to that.

How I had gotten myself into this situation stems from a decision two years back to volunteer at the Barclay’s at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City with my older son, Frankie. Barclay’s donates an awful lot of cash to good causes from the tournament and volunteers just need to pony up $65 to participate. They need about 1,800 of us to help make the tournament a success.

Last year we were ambassadors, which sound royal, but really amounts to being an usher at a multiplex, minus the flashlight. The difference was our venue, a tent that overlooked a green and two tee boxes, where we directed spectators toward food, bathrooms and their favorite golfers.

In return, we received access passes all week, ate free lunch and picked up cool golf shirts. Oh, and we sometimes stood closer to Matt Kuchar, Rickie Fowler and Justin Rose than your tailor measuring your inseam.

Close.

And yet ambassadors sometimes get called on to perform heroic tasks. They are the secret weapons of the tournament, like Clark Kents begging to let out their inner Superman. To give you an example, when the head marshal on the 7th hole grabbed me a few minutes before Tiger Woods’ entourage came barreling through like war tribe of Scots bent on scorching the English. Escorting me through the crowd onto the course – a panting female fan meanwhile pleaded with me, “Take me with you, puuuuleeeeease.” - Boss Marshal thrust me in the direction behind the tee box and commanded:

“We need you to go up behind the tee box and push back those people behind the tree. They can’t be hanging on that hill behind the tee box while Tiger is teeing off.”

Why not clear out a machine gun nest instead.

The crowd was a mix of America. Normally, mild mannered working folks who paid their taxes, cut their lawns and spent two weeks at the shore in the summer. But right at that moment, they were a juiced-up brand of scary. They were hanging on this tree like sloths, their eyes rotating counter clockwise, already screaming things like, “BE THE BALL, TIGER!!!” and “SIGN MY CHEST!”

“What do I use to keep them back?” I squeaked out.

“Just use your power of persuasion,” and off he went.

Suffice to say I survived that effort and was close enough to Tiger to read his scorecard. I think he gave me a wink when he drilled his drive down the fairway. Emboldened by that success, I signed up again this year in Ridgewood. But this year, my son declared us marshals.

Ambassadorship is to marshaling at the Barclay’s what the batboy is to the starting pitcher in the major leagues. You are in the game. You are on the tee box with Ernie Els. You are looking over Adam Scott’s shoulder as he lines up a putt. You could get hit in the head by a Phil Mickelson drive and be on television as he revives you with a smelly golf glove. .

And so it went for three days. Hold the rope for Keegan Bradley, distribute unbroken Justin Rose’s used tees to kids, casually explain to other grown men where Paul Casey likes to hit from in the tee box. All very proper. Oh, there was the one moment Angel Cabrera yelled in his best Argentine accent at a gabber on a cell phone down below the 2nd Tee Box to “PLEASE BE QUIET” with the kind of authority that made Rory McElroy apologize eight holes away.

And Furyk busted my chops as I held up my arms for the crowd to be quiet, “Um, there are guys still on the green so your arms are going to get pretty tired up there.”

Touché’, Jimbo.

Then came the call.

They needed some muscle to guard the flanks of the leaders on Sunday, none other than my new golf buddy, Furyk and his Aussie partner Jason Day both at 9 under.

Okay, they needed anyone who wasn’t passed out from jungle juice or injured from Mickelson’s errant shots into the hospitality tent on hole 5. But really the same thing.

Suddenly, I’m walking the fairways INSIDE THE ROPES with the leaders of a major PGA event where thousands of fans were lining up along the ropes like antelope on the range in a Far Side comic, and millions more watching from around the world. Cameras everywhere. Close to CBS’s irreverent broadcast rock star David Feherty, who got as many shout outs from the crowd as Tiger ever did. Basically, David and I were rocking the course.

My job was to make sure when one of my charges hit the ball too close to the fairway ropes nobody in the gallery did anything crazy like take a photo on his backswing, or start chatting him up or ask him to sign a body part.

This went on for a few hours. Scaling the course like a goat to cut over to each hole, slicing through hordes fans like Moses parted the Red Sea.

When another marshal needed help with crowd control with the next-to-last group, eventual winner Hunter Mahan and local Wyckoff resident Morgan Hoffman, yours truly found himself greenside so close I could see which way the ball would break and count dimples on the ball. Try that from your living room couch watching an HD 3D X-Ray Vision Surroundascope Curved Flat Screen.

Mahan started to pull away from the pack so the marshals with the Seal Team 5 radios shifted resources to him. And when he hit his drive on the 18th, up by three strokes, into the woods, well you would have thought you were on the set of Jurassic Park. Thousands of fans streaked toward his ball like wildebeests in heat. MAYDAY! MAYDAY! “

My comrades were diving into the fray with the zeal of soccer hoodlums gone berserk, trying to create daylight between Mahan’s ball and the mass of pulsating flesh. I gave chase with the fluidity of a broken garage door.

All the solemnness of the golf whisper that had been exerted on Hole 2 when some golfer 20 strokes off the pace was lining up his putt was a distance memory when the leader entered the darkness of the woods. Whatever decorum had been established vanished under the cover of trees, replaced by flying elbows, spilling beer and the sanctity of a barroom.

A dozen of us produced cords and ropes from nowhere and set up a perimeter around the ball that could later be used for Cirque du Soleil. But he still had about 4 feet of room max. He wanted more and we were his resources. Try to push back a crowd sometime with a bungee cord essentially. See how far you get.

Meanwhile, Mahan is playing for $1.44 million dollars and he’s got a gang of New Jersey dudes yelling stuff like, “Hunter, don’t worry, it’s only for a lot of money.” Laughter from the crowd. More beer toasts.

When the real cops came and used their huge chests to push back the crowd, Mahan punched out to the fairway to make bogey and effectively seal the deal. I think I saw him nervously looking over his shoulder to see if the crowd was following, but I could be wrong.

But we still had Mr. Furyk’s Hansel and Gretel routine to deal with in a few minutes. Same routine. Swarms of humans dropping out of trees and emerging from underground tunnels engulfed his ball, as if they had trapped a wild boar. Marshals dove in between, set up barbed wire and watch towers to give Furyk the room he needed to eventually escape the situation. I am pretty sure he thought it was curtains for him and the next green he’d see would be a pool table in some guy’s basement in Nutley.

Until he realized the former ambassador was in position.