Joel Helm and his son, Jackson, at Bethpage Black in October 2024.
Courtesy Photo
It’s 3:08 a.m. and I can’t sleep.
Sure, it’s the first time I’ve bunked in the back of a Tesla, propped up on a squeaky, unstable air mattress. And yes, it doesn’t help that there’s two of us crammed in here.
“Here” happens to be Bethpage State Park, with my son, in the famous queue parking lot filled with dozens of other campers trying their best to get a precious few minutes of sleep. We’re in spot 9.
Depending on who you ask, we have somewhere between a modest and probable chance of scoring a spot on the coveted Black course tee sheet in roughly three hours’ time. This — sleeping in a car in a parking lot — is my son’s birthday present. Jackson, an avid golfer with a contagious smile and a keen sense of adventure, has been asking to take a father-son trip for the better part of a year. A 13th birthday splurge to Bethpage sure seemed like a great choice, right up until he finally fell asleep at 3:07 a.m. Now, if I so much as move a muscle, our air mattress will launch him into the rear passenger door.
The next couple of hours of sleeplessness crawl by. Motionless, I stare through the panoramic roof of our night’s accommodation, thinking about my previous experience at Bethpage. Twenty-plus years ago, my idiot buddies and I made the thousand-mile trek, in my buddy’s mom’s old van, all the way from the cornfields of Indiana. We’d all watched a thrilling U.S. Open unfold here, and immediately felt the pull to try our hand at the notoriously difficult course dubbed, “The People’s Country Club.”
This time, from our home in Florida, I used a mix of credit card points, Southwest Airlines vouchers and good old-fashioned networking to get here at all. We play most of our golf at our local muni, a beautiful yet flawed place that’s seemingly under constant pressure to remain a golf course at all. Most courses in Bethpage Black’s echelon of quality and prestige are, candidly, out of reach for us. To get on Bethpage, all you need is a car, or a friend with a Tesla, a willingness to lose a night of sleep, and the $140 bucks required for non-residents. All this to say; it feels that we are the very definition of “The People” this country club is meant to serve.
At 6 a.m. on the dot, a young lady knocks on our window and hands us a bakery ticket. We’re numbers 22 and 23. Is this good? No clue. Inexperienced as we are with camping, it’s a mad scramble to deflate and smash our air mattress back into the car while watching dozens of other campers expertly pull out of the parking lot three seconds after receiving their tickets. “Come on, jump in! We’ll come back for our stuff,” I yell at Jackson, not remembering exactly how the rest of this process works.
Clutching my bakery ticket, we speed towards the clubhouse. There’s already a long line. Fortunately, we had practice pushing people out of our way because we flew on Southwest (pick any seat and go!) just yesterday, and some very helpful guys from across the pond give us the low-down on what to do next. Navigating past two dozen other hopefuls, we claim our rightful spots, just in time for our numbers to be called.
We walk up to the tee sheet window, a decidedly old school counter that feels an awful lot like booking an airline ticket in 1994. Most out-of-towners don’t realize the place has five courses, all color coded, or that the Black isn’t everyone’s favorite. When-in-Rome, however. We’ve come 1,116 miles to be here. Planes, trains and the back of a Tesla.
“Can I please have that 8:40 two-some on the Black course?” I ask, as politely as possible. For all I know, they could simply say, “Nope. But thanks for coming!” But they did not.
The beaming smile on my son’s face when we secured a spot, the 8:40 with two strangers, was already worth the effort to make it this far. I’d gotten maybe two hours of crappy sleep, he’d gotten less, but it sure felt like we’d already conquered the most treacherous part of the day and we’d yet to set foot on the most difficult golf course either of us had ever seen. After cleaning up our campsite, we grabbed breakfast at nearby Bagel Hut with the helpful English guys for further course reconnaissance.
“Don’t hit it in the rough, ever,” says the first guy. “Don’t be afraid to cry a little,” says the second. “No shame in dropping a ball where you think it went,” says the third. “Sometimes, you have to drop a ball where you wish it went.” Before we finished our bagels, Jackson had heard enough horror stories to proclaim, “maybe, uh, maybe I should just have fun today.”
Jackson tees off on the 18th hole.Courtesy Photo
Fun, truthfully, is always on the docket with Jackson. He’s my mini-me, in so many ways. We both love all-things-sports, a good laugh, a good steak. He’s got my wife’s bright blue eyes, but everything else favors dad. At lunch yesterday, our server, even before greeting us, pointed at me and said “Copy.” Then, over to him laughing, “Paste.” In some ways, however, our personalities differ significantly. He got the people-pleasing gene from mom, and that is often at odds with the wildly competitive streak he got from me. That combo has certainly led to an interesting human we’re raising, one who relishes the chance to beat the hell out of someone in golf, and then somehow convinces them to smile about it afterwards.
Despite being in 8th grade this year, he’s well into his third season of high school varsity golf in Florida. He’s played his entire life, and even though we’ve yet to allow him to travel the country and compete in national tournaments like some of his peers, his best results suggest he has a bright future. When he shot even par to earn his first high school victory a year ago on the day he turned 13, he beamed the entire way around, one of those entire face smiles — eyes and cheeks and braces all proclaiming the sheer joy of what great golf means to any player.
On some days, however, there’s no question he’s brought middle school angsts onto the opening tee-box with him. Helplessly watching him battle nerves, and self-doubt, and other kids cheering against him, is tougher for me than hitting the first fairway on the Black Course. But that’s also what makes this dumb game so damn special. The concept is so utterly, ridiculously simple; Hit. Ball. In. Hole. Yet, the sports’ inherent challenges; hazards, unfair breaks, the temptation to bend a rule in your favor, has given our son — no longer a child but not yet a man — an opportunity to prepare for adulthood in the gentle confines of fairways and greens.
Back at the course, we arrive in plenty of time to hit a few balls at the irons-only range. We take the obligatory photo by the famous warning sign before watching 100 percent of the guys in the groups ahead of us miss the fairway on 1.
On the tee, we meet our playing partners, Skip and Jeff, two guys in their 70s who have lived in New York for much of their lives. We learn quickly that we hit the partner jackpot with them — they are fun, decent players and meaningfully pleased to play with a 7th grader with an 11 handicap.
Skip leads us off, striping a driver down the middle of the sharp, dogleg right. Jeff misses so far right it was perfect. Jackson and I both find the fairway. Smiles abound.
Walking down the first fairway with my son, who first made me a father, gazing back up at The People’s Country Club, it’s one of those extraordinarily rare times where I’m living moment by moment. This fairway, especially viewed backwards, is roughly the width of a middle school hallway. But here, at this glorious place that’s open to everyone, he’s not a 13-year-old kid moving from english to math to science class. Today, he’s meandering down a hallway from childhood to manhood. Right now, in this moment of moments, he and I get to experience it together. Memories, for the rest of life.
Yes, we’re out here, playing golf like we’ve done literally thousands of times. But in this moment, fueled by fear and bagels, after sleeping on an air mattress from hell, I’m with the person I love to play with the most, on a golf course that is simply, “the most.”
It takes us well over five hours, 10 miles of walking (more accurately, hiking) and 173 shots between the two of us. Today, I wished it took longer. I wouldn’t change a thing about this place. I wouldn’t change a thing about this day.
Well. Maybe I’d 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 helmjoeld@gmail.com.
