Secret Club with golf diehards operating inside Bethpage
Farmingdale, NY – You can Feel Mike and Gary ushered in the focus.
On the ball, the ball lands neatly in the center of the fairway at Bethpage Red. Before shooting high, go straight into the air. Before the club even hit the ball.
So when the point finally arrives, I’m not sure if I’ll be excited or relieved.
“Do you know what I call you?” Mike asked.
I can guess.
“I call you AF- Sandbagger! ”
I spent most of my life playing golf at Bethpage, which means I encountered hundreds of Mikes and Garys. I felt their handshake. I experienced their cruel, meaningless behavior. I’ve experienced their ancient tradition of loving love: withered trash speech.
But it turns out that I never played golf with anyone like Mike Pomerico and Gary Cohan. Since Mike and Gary are not only Bethpage’s lives, they are part of a secret club that exists under the surface of Bethpage’s packed t-shirts, a regular Joes club that they are serious sticks and call Bethpage their golf home, which is one.
You see, thirty years ago, a group of Mikes and Garys realized they wanted a community of private golf clubs without any ego, so they formed their own club. The goal is to bring together a group of like-minded Bethpage stubborn, stubborn, stubborn people (like them) who care more about the virtues of golf as a game than about the status given by the club’s crest. They will go to places that are welcome – that’s good news because they are welcomed at Bethpage State Park, most of whom have already competed. Ultimately, perhaps unsurprisingly, the exact collection of characters they might find in black courses: doctors and firefighters, lawyers and policemen, transit workers and accountants. A name is the only problem left, so they solved a simple problem: Nassau Players Club.
Technically, the Nassau Players Club has no home. It is a “club without borders”, which means it has no territorial rights. But spending a few minutes with Mike or Gary within the Bethpage clubhouse, you quickly realize that definition is a fallacy. Their home in Black courses, regular tee times and events have been staged for most of the last three decades – everyone knows their name.
“Do you want the usual one?” a server inside the club asked a few minutes before our serve time, as if on the prompt.
“No, not today,” Mike replied.
Mike is the president of the NPC, a former lad with a larger lifespan, with a rib-like sense of humor. He works at a local country club, but most of his golf life exists in Bethpage, where he seems to be loved and feared in the same place. His swing was long, slow and confident, and he played our rounds from a cart and respected the speed of the game. He satisfies the time between shots with laughter, skewed jokes and self-deprecating time. He barely covered his contempt when he heard about the fourth shot I gave us in the bragging rights game.
“We don’t do that Stroke” he said, laughing.
Mike reserves trains for the Nassau Players Club on time, which includes a regular set of events on Bethpage.
“90% of our golf play here at Bethpage,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where it’s green, blue or black, it’s OK, we play where we can.”
All members are serious players Serious There are many definitions. Some are tournament-level golfers, and many like Mike: Unit Number Players for Golf Disease Cases. The common topic is the love of golf, competition, and the communities where crossroads exist.
“It’s a group of people, a hundred guys from all walks of life,” Mike said. “Retired police. Retired firefighters. Active police, active firefighters. Businessmen, accountants, Galbags. You just need to love and be passionate to play golf.”
Recognizing the countercultural tone in the club’s origin story doesn’t require sociologists, but Mike insists that the player club is not Push backward Oppose country club culture, elitism or anyone. According to Mike’s estimate, the Nassau players only want put up Community, for those trying to tear down others, is intolerable – the club’s brief “code of conduct” proves this.
The Nassau Player Club Code of Conduct prohibits its members from doing the following:
– Golf or any other action in personal life that may discredit the club or its membership
– Deliberate, repetitive violations of golf and obstacle course rules
– Sign up for “Nassau Players” food, drinks, goods or services in private courses
– Attempt to use private club facilities under false pretexts
– Aggressive actions against other members, such as over-expression of temper, failure to repay debts on the golf course or subsequent
For Mike, Gary, and the rest of the 100 or so, they consider themselves part of the Nassau player, the responsibility is much deeper than the Bethpage-themed bag label. It’s the structure to be one of the best municipal courses in golf city and stick with the tradition of ordinary people taking on something truly extraordinary. Most days, this is the purest form of golf: equality, honesty, and sincerity. Sometimes it’s just a place to share some laughs with strangers.
As our turn on red approaches the conclusion, the trash talk melts into real kindness, which often does it on black – I wonder what the service in Bethpage’s Secret Brotherhood taught me two of my game partners about golf’s mates.
Once this question was asked, I felt the familiar buzz of expectation in the air. Someone finished another Haymaker. Then Gary spoke.
“I grew up here in Bethpage. I used to play here, but I didn’t know about the Nassau players,” he said.
“It’s all about playing Bethpage in friendship. This place is great. It’s home.”
As it turns out, it was a breath of oneself.
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