Policing the Ryder Cup by Bike sounds nice. But it’s a serious matter

Farmingdale, NY-DEZE 45th Ryder Cup in Bethpage Black, deep in a 1400-hectare state park, would always be a spectacle. And then the president of the United States showed up to view the first day action. For the hundreds of police officers who work the event – on foot, in golf carts, on cycling – it was like a change in the guard. Their bosses were still their bosses, but now the secret service led the show.

Around 11 am, Kory Barney, one of the dozens of officers covering the event with bicycle, looked up from the saddle of his familiar 21-speeds Black Trek Mountain Bike and saw Air Force One flying over the track. For a 20-year career as an officer of the state of Park in New York, he thought he had seen it all. On Friday he discovered that he hadn’t done that.

“In this job you always pump adrenaline,” said Lt. Barney Friday afternoon, shortly after Donald Trump had left the building. “But with Potus here it was even more.”

It was 3 p.m. Barney’s Day had started 12 hours earlier, in a hotel room, dressing in the middle of the night. He put on his black cycling trousers with their charging bags, his steel-gray five-pound Kevlar vest, his black Park Police/Bethpage Black Golf shirt. Then, finally, his black tool belt (in a way of speaking), a glock that dangles it, above his right bag. Long before dawn, he was in the police command of the tournament and received a pep talk from his captain with effort that is much higher than everything that the 24 Ryder Cup players will hear from them: “Take good care of yourself, take care of each other, take care of the people outside.”

The tone was lighter on the track.

Can I buy your shirt?

Can I get a ride?

Do you want beer?

New York.

Barney comes from Way Upstate New York and as a child who has taken some golf lessons from the local professional, Derek Sprague, who is today CEO of the PGA of America. Barney, a father and a husband, is a 200-pound man who can run a miles in 6 minutes, ski every double black diamond route, cycle Rocky Mountain paths all day long and break 90 on a certain Sunday, but not this Sunday. He will work.

Barney will tell you that a bike is an unlikely but spectacular way to cross a golf course and visit the circumference. He is there not to look at the Golf, but to see the people watching the Golf. He wears impenetrable sunglasses. You can’t know what he is looking at.

“You constantly scan the crowd,” Barney said Friday afternoon. “You are looking for something that is unusual, looking for a person who acts in a strange way, or are somewhere, they should not be.”

He observed a man who knelt on a macadampad and pretended, strangely enough, that the long plant plants were a kind of wig.

“Does this man give you something to worry about?” Barney was asked.

“No,” said Barney. “He just has some fun.”

A knapsack without supervision that can be disturbing. Three extra large Frat boys, chewless and burned and stumbling that can be disturbing. A man who turns a plant into a wig is nothing.

Five days in this long seven -day working week, was the biggest problem that Barney had seen, overserved customers, and not much of it has been. It is expensive and is bombed on $ 18 beers. No one wants to be thrown away after paying $ 750 (minimum) for a one -day ticket, for the very first Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black.

Barney and the 11 other bicycle officers drive in the rough, among the fans, and never in the fairways, among the players. The wheels of Barney’s Trek sometimes rolled through Slop on Friday, kicked mud on his calves, which have been changed to tree trunks for years of skiing, running and bicycles. During the week he puts hundreds of kilometers on his bike. He often goes, optionally, 16 hours without eating. He will sleep and eat and catch up with his life, while Sunday will change on Monday and this Ryder Cup finds its place in the books. Until that time he has two priorities, the second more important than the first:

*Put a good mojo in the home team;

*Serve and protect; serve and protect; serve and protect.

Stopping is a professional risk. When he stops, he becomes a human information cabin. People want to know where they can go through merch, how you can get to the spectators’ shuttles, on which gap is Bryson Deschambeau and the like. Kory Barney answers every question he can, as patient as he can, looking in the middle distance all the time, to the left and left from the right, as a tennis fan that looks at a rally. He says, “Let’s stay here.”

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments on michael.bamberger@golf.com.