It’s 3:08 am and I can’t sleep.
Of course, it is the first time that I have been cut in a Tesla at the back of a squeaky, unstable air mattress. And yes, it doesn’t help that two of us have been crammed here.
“Here” happens to be Bethpage State Park, with my son, at the famous waiting parking lot filled with dozens of other campers who do their best to get a precious few minutes of sleep. We are on spot 9.
Depending on who you ask, we have somewhere between a modest and likely chance of scoring a place on the coveted black T -shirt course in about three hours. This – sleeping in a car in a parking lot – is my son’s birthday present. Jackson, an avid golfer with an infectious smile and a sharp feeling of adventure, has already asked for a father-son trip for most of a year. A 13th birthday edition for Bethpage seemed a great choice, until he finally fell asleep at 3:07 am, when I move as much as a muscle, our air mattress will launch him in the back passenger door.
The next hours of insomnia crawl by. Mandeloze, I stare through the panoramic roof of the accommodation of our night, thinking about my earlier experience at Bethpage. Twenty years ago my idiotic friends and I made the thousand miles, in the old van of my buddy, all the way from the corn fields of Indiana. We all had an exciting one open that opened here, and immediately felt the attraction to try our hand to the notoriously difficult course called: “The People’s Country Club.”
>>>
This time, from our house in Florida, I used a mix of credit card points, Southwest Airlines vouchers and good old-fashioned networks to get completely here. We play the majority of our wave on our local Muni, a beautiful but inadequate place that apparently is under constant pressure to stay a golf course at all. Most courses in Bethpage Black’s Echelon of Quality and Prestige are, candid, out of reach for us. To get on Bethpage, you are only needed a car, or a friend with a Tesla, a willingness to lose a night’s sleep and the $ 140 dollar needed for non-residents. All this to say; It feels that we are the definition of ‘the people’ that this country club is intended to serve.
At 6 o’clock on the spot a young lady is knocking on our window and gives us a bimple ticket. We are numbers 22 and 23. Is this good? No idea. Inexperienced as we are camping, it is a crazy scramble to drain our air mattress again and to hit back to the car while they professionally see dozens of other campers pulling out of the parking lot three seconds after receiving their tickets. “Come on, jump in! We come back for our things,” I shout against Jackson, not remembering how the rest of this process works.
Holding my Ticket bakery, we accelerate to the clubhouse. There is already a long line. Fortunately we had an exercise to push people out of the way because we flew on Southwest yesterday (choose a chair and go!), And some very helpful guys from over the pond give us the low-down about what we have to do now. Navigate past two dozen other hopeful, we claim our rightful places, just in time for our songs that are mentioned.
We walk to the Tee-Bladraam, a decided Old School desk that feels a lot like booking an aviation ticket in 1994. Most out-of-towns do not realize that the place has five jobs, all colors coded, or that black is not everyone’s favorite. When in the Rome, however. We came 1,116 miles to be here. Aircraft, trains and the back of a Tesla.
“Can I please have 8:40 two-sine on the black job?” I ask, as politely as possible. As far as I know, they can just say, “No. But thanks for it coming!” But they didn’t.
The radiant smile on my son’s face when we secured a place, the 8:40 with two strangers, was already worth it to get that far. I might have received worthless sleep, he had become less, but it certainly felt as if we had overcome the most insidious part of the day and we still had to set foot on the most difficult golf course we had ever seen. After cleaning up our campsite, we took breakfast at nearby Bagel Hut with the helpful English boys for further exploration of the course.
“Never put it in the rough,” says the first man. “Don’t be afraid to cry a little,” says the second. “No shame to drop a ball where you think it went,” says the third. “Sometimes you have to drop a ball where you wanted it to go.” Before we finished our bagels, Jackson had heard enough horror stories to proclaim: “Maybe, uh, maybe I should just have fun today.”
Courtesy
Nice, truthful, is always on the docket with Jackson. He is my mini-me in so many ways. We both love all-thingsports, a good smile, a good steak. He has the bright blue eyes of my wife, but everything else is preferred by dad. During lunch yesterday our server, even before they greet us, pointed to me and said ‘copy’. Then, laughing at him, “stick.” In some respects, however, our personalities differ considerably. He got the people-pleasant gene of Mama, and that is often at odds with the wild-competitive streak he received from me. That combination has certainly led to an interesting person we raise, someone who enjoys the chance of playing hell from someone in Golf, and then she convinces somehow to smile about it afterwards.
Although he is in 8th grade this year, he is far in his third season of high school Varsity Golf in Florida. He has played all his life, and although we still have to allow him to travel the country and participate in national tournaments such as some of his colleagues, his best results suggest that he has a bright future. When he even shot pargot to achieve his first high school victory a year ago on the day he turned 13, he shouted all the way, one of those whole facial smiles – eyes and cheeks and brackets that all mean the pure joy of what amazing wave means to every player.
On some days, however, there is no doubt that he has brought him on the public tee box on the Opening T-Box. Seeing helpless how nerves and self -doubt, and other children who cheered against him, is harder for me to hit the first fairway on the Black Baan. But that is also what makes this stupid game so damn special. The concept is so complete, ridiculously simple; Hit. Ball. In. Hole. Yet the inherent challenges of the sport; Dangers, unfair breaks, the temptation to bend a rule to your advantage, our son – no longer a child but no man – has given an opportunity to prepare for maturity in the soft limits of fairways and greens.
Back on the course we arrive in enough time to touch a few balls when I only reach only irons. We take the mandatory photo of the famous warning board before we look 100 percent of the boys in the groups for us, miss the fairway at 1.
At the Tee we meet our play partners, Skip and Jeff, two boys in the 1970s who lived in New York for a large part of their lives. We quickly learn that we touch the partner Jackpot with them – they are fun, decent players and useful to play with a 7th class with an 11 handicap.
Skip leads us away and strips a driver in the middle of the sharp, dogleg on the right. Jeff misses so far that it was perfect. Jackson and I both find the fairway. Laughs in abundance.
Walking through the first fairway with my son, who made me a father for the first time, who again stared at the People’s Country Club, it is one of those extremely rare times in which I live at the moment. This fairway, especially backwards, is roughly the width of a secondary school. But here, in this glorious place that is open to everyone, he is not a 13-year-old child who moves from English to mathematics to science class. Nowadays he wriggles a corridor from youth to masculinity. At the moment, at the moment of moments, he and I can experience it together. Memories, for the rest of life.
Yes, we are here, golf as we have literally done thousands of times. But at the moment, fed by fear and bagels, after sleeping on an air mattress from hell, I am with the person with whom I like to play most, on a golf course that is just ‘the most’.
It costs us more than five hours, 10 miles walk (rather, walking) and 173 shots between the two of us. Today I wish it took longer. I would not change this place. I would not change this day.
Good. Maybe I would get a better mattress.
Joel Helm is, among other things, an avid golfer, golf coach, golf dad and golf writer. He can be reached at helmjoets@gmail.com.
#trek #miles #unforgettable #fatherson #Bethpage #Black