Farmingdale, NY – You could feeling Mike and Gary end for the clou.
Before the ball neatly landed in the middle of the fairway at Bethpage Red. Before it shot high and straight into the air. Before the club even hit the ball.
And so when the clou finally arrived, I wasn’t sure if I should be enthusiastic or relieved.
“Do you know what I would call you for that?” Asked Mike.
I could guess.
I would get rid of you – and sandbagger! “
I played golf at Bethpage for most of my life, which means that I met hundreds of Mikes and Garys. I felt the iron grip of their handshake. I have experienced their sudden, no-nonsense ways. And I have experienced their old tradition of affection: the wilt of waste talk.
But it turns out that I have never with someone like Mike Pomerico and Gary Cohan, the two men with whom I shared an afternoon four on Bethpage Red, ever golf. Because Mike and Gary are not only Bethpage Lifers, they are part of a secret club that exists just below the surface of Bethpage’s packaged T -shirt magazines – a club of regular Joes who are serious sticks, and who call Bethpage their golf house and take it with them.
You see, three decades ago, a group of Mikes and Garys realized that they wanted the community of a private golf club without one of the pretension, so they formed their own club. The goal was to bring a group of like -minded Bethpage diehardsPeople (like them) who cared much more about the virtues of Golf as a competition than the status endowed by a club comb. They would go where they were welcome – which was good news because they were welcome in Bethpage State Park, where most of them already played. In the end, and perhaps not surprising, they ended up with the exact collection of people you could find on any Tuesday about the black course: doctors and firefighters, lawyers and police officers, transit workers and accountants. A name was the only problem that was left, so they settled on a simple one: The Nassau Players Club.
Technically, the Nassau Players Club has no home. It is a ‘club without borders’, which means that it has no territorial rights. But spend a few minutes with Mike of Gary in the Bethpage Clubhouse and you will soon realize that definition is a misconception. Their house is here on the Black Course, where regular T -shirt times and events have been performed for most of the past three decades – and where everyone who is someone is known.
“Do you want it usual?” A server in the clubhouse asks, as if at the point of a few minutes before our Tee time.
“No, not today,” Mike replies.
Mike, a larger ex-COP with a ribbed sense of humor, is the president of the NPC. He works a part -time performance in a local country club, but most of his golf life exists here in Bethpage, where it seems that he is loved and feared in equal parts. His swing is long, slow and confident and he plays our round from a cart with a militant respect for tempo or play. He fills the time between shots with laughter, skewers and self -contempt. When he hears, I have taken pictures in a bragging rights competition with our fourth, he hardly hides his contempt.
‘We don’t do it strokes“He says, shoots me a grin.
Mike holds the trains on time for the Nassau Players Club, including organizing a normal series of events at Bethpage.
“Ninety percent of our wave is played here at Bethpage,” he said. “Whether it is about the green or blue or the black, it doesn’t matter, we play where we can.”
However, all members are serious players serious Has many definitions. Some are golfers in tournament, many are like Mike: single figures with a bad thing of the golf bug. The common thread is a love for golf, for competition and for the community that exists at the intersection.
“It is a group of boys, about a hundred boys from all walks of life,” says Mike. “Retired agents. Retired firefighters. Active agents, active firefighters. Business people, accountants, garbagemen. You just have to love and have a passion to play golf.”
No sociologist is needed to recognize the countercultural tones in the club’s story, but Mike insists that the players’ club is not push back Against Country Club culture, Elitarianism or someone else, real. In the estimate of Mike, the Nassau players have only tried build Community, and have no tolerance for those who want to break off someone else-one point that is evident from the short ‘code’ of the club, five-line code ‘.
The Nassau Players Club Code of Behavior prohibits the following behavior by its members:
– any other action in Golf or in their personal lives that could discredit the club or her membership
– Intentional, repetitive violations of the rules of golf and disability procedures
– Signing “Nassau players” for food, drinks, merchandise or services during a private course
– Try to use the facilities of a private club under false pretents
– Actions were considered seriously offensive for the other members, such as excessive tones of mood, not repaying debts made on or outside the golf course
For Mike, Gary and the rest of the 100 or so who consider themselves as part of the Nassau players, the responsibility is much deeper than a Bag-Tag with Bethpage theme. It is about being part of the structure of one of the best municipal courses in Golf, and maintaining a tradition of ordinary people participating in something really extraordinary. Most days that take the form of golf on its purest: equal, honest, sincere. Some days it is just a place to share some laughter with a stranger.
While our round on the red concluded its conclusion and the waste talk melted in real friendliness, as it does so often on the black-early I wonder what served in the secret fraternal order of Bethpage my two play partners had taught golf.
As soon as I asked the question, I felt that well -known mood of anticipation in the air. Someone ended to deliver another hay maker. Then Gary spoke.
“I grew up here in Bethpage. I always played here and I didn’t know Nassau players,” he said pausingly.
“It’s all about comrades that plays Bethpage. This place is great. It’s at home.”
That turned out, was its own punchline.
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