Meet the Golf Diehards Secret Club operating within Bethpage

Farmingdale, NY – you can smelt Mike and Gary turning on for punchline.

Before the ball was neatly descended to the center of the road in Bethpage Red. Before he shot up and straight in the air. Before the club even hit the ball.

And so, when he finally scored, I was not sure if I would be harassed or relieved.

“Do you know what I would call you about it?” Mike asked.

I can think.

“I would call you af -ting Sandbagger! “

I have played Golf in Bethpage for most of my life, which means I have met hundreds of friends and Garys. I have felt the iron syllable of tightening their hands. I have experienced their way of Brusk, not meaningless. And I have experienced their ancient tradition of attempt: with trash-to-talk.

But as it turns out, I have never played golf with anyone like Mike Pomerico and Gary Cohan, both men with whom I shared a fourth afternoon in Bethpage RED earlier this year. Because Mike and Gary are not just the Bethpage Lifers, they are part of a secret club that exists just below the surface of Bethpage’s filled sheets – a club with regular joes that are serious sticks, and calling Bethpage their golf house and means.

You see, three decades ago, a group of Mika and Garn realized they wanted the community of a private golf club without any pretense, so they formed a club of their own. The goal was to merge a group of Diehards Bethpage with the same mindPeople (like those) who cared much more about the virtues of golf as a competition than the status of a club ridge. They would go where they were welcome – which was good news because they were welcome at Bethpage State Park, where most of them had already played. Finally, and perhaps startling, they tried with the exact collection of people you can find on the occasional tuesday in the black course: doctors and firefighters, lawyers and policemen, transit workers and accountants. One name was the only problem that remained, so they settled in a simple one: Nassau players club.

Technically speaking, the Nassau player club has no home. It is a “club without borders”, which means there are no territorial rights. But spend a few minutes with Mike or Gary inside Bethpage Clubhouse and soon you will realize that definition is a mistake. Their home is right here in the black course, where regular times and events are staged for the best part of the last three decades – and where everyone who is someone knows their name.

“Would you like the usual?” A server inside the club asks, as if it were in the suggestion, a few minutes before our time.

“No, not today,” replies Mike.

Mike, a former chapter than life with a sense of humor of the ribs, is the President of the NPC. He works a part -time concert at a local club in the country, but most of his golf life exists here in Bethpage, where he seems to be loved and scared in equal parts. His oscillation is long, slow and safe, and he plays our round from a wheelchair with a militant respect for the pace of the game. It meets the time between shooting with laughter, skewing jokes and self-amortization. When he listens I have given shots in a match of the rights of boasting our fourth, he barely hides his contempt.

“We do not stroke“He says, shooting me a fuss.

Mike holds the trains in time for the Nassau player club, which includes the reception of a regular group of events in Bethpage.

“Ninety percent of our golf is played here in Bethpage,” he said. “Whether it is in green or blue or black, it doesn’t matter, we play where we can.”

All members are serious players, anyway grave There are many definitions. Some are tournament players, many are like friends: one -digit players with a bad Golf Bug case. The usual thread is a love for golf, for competition and for the community that exists at the intersection.

“It’s a group of boys, about a hundred boys from all spheres of life,” says Mike. “Retired cops. Retired firefighters. Active police, active firefighters. Business people, accountants, garbars. You just have to love and have a passion for playing golf.”

It doesn’t need a sociologist to know countercultural tones in the history of the club origin, but Mike insists that the player club is not returning Against the culture of the country’s club, elitism or anyone, indeed. According to Mike’s rating, Nassau players have only ever been asked build up The community, and have no tolerance for those seeking to overthrow anyone else-a point proven by the “Code of Behavior” of all, with five club rules.

Nassau player club behavior code stops the following behavior from its members:
– Any other action on golf or their personal lives, which can discredit the club or membership
– deliberate, repeated violations of the rules of golf and handicap procedures
– Signature of “Nassau players” for food, drinks, goods or services in a private course
– Attempting to use the objects of a private club under fake claims
– Actions that are considered seriously offensive to other members, such as excessive temperament shows, failure to repay debts made in or out of the golf course

For Mike, Gary and the remaining 100 or more that consider themselves part of Nassau players, the responsibility is much deeper than a Bethpage -themed bag label. It is about being part of the structure of one of the best municipal courses in Golf, and to maintain a tradition of ordinary people participating in something really extraordinary. Most days, this takes the form of golf in pure: equal, sincere, sincere. Some days, it’s just a place to share some laughter with a stranger.

As our red round approached its conclusion-and the trash conversation melted into genuine goodness, the way you do so often in black-it served what it served in Bethpage’s brotherly secret order had taught my two partners playing for golf.

As soon as I asked the question, I felt that familiar wore of the forecast in the air. Someone was staring at to give another haymaker. Then Gary spoke.

“I grew up here in Bethpage. I’ve played here all the time and didn’t know about Nassau players,” he said, stopping.

“It is about the society that plays Bethpage. This place is great. Homesh at home.”

That, it turned out, was a punchline all its own.

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