Chang-rae Lee Writes About Getting a Tee-time at Bethpage Black

It is 3:30 a.m. on a cool June day, and I am at Bethpage on Long Island. My home is 40 miles away, clear on the other side of New York City, in suburban New Jersey. But here I am alone, and not completely unhappy. I am lying down in the back of my old Honda station wagon, waiting for the man to drive down from the clubhouse and hand out the numbered tickets.

They're going to hold the U.S. Open here, on the Black Course (the one I'm aiming to play in the morning), and it's almost impossible to get a tee time the normal way anymore, which is to call on the telephone reservation system. I've been trying for weeks, but I don't have an auto-redialer. If the line isn't busy, the earliest time I can get is a 3:50 p.m. slot, which means it's unlikely I'll finish the round before dark. Even with the five courses here at Bethpage State Park, there are too many golfers in the megalopolis. They cram us in, and it takes more than five hours to play, sometimes six.

This afternoon I called and happened to talk to a real person. He told me the best way to get one of the walk-up slots they reserve each hour is to camp out the night before, the way people do for Bruce Springsteen tickets.

"So I just come and wait in my car?"

"Yeah, you'll see."

"But what time should I get there?"

"It's up to you."

"What time would you get there?"

"I'm not a golfer."

"Let's say you were."

"Maybe midnight, 1 o'clock. Some guys come earlier. Hey, it's up to you."

After dinner I told my wife, Michelle, of my plans, and she gazed at me with gravest love and pity, as if she had just realized the full extent of my Golf Problem, how deep it ran and how dark. She could only faintly nod as I explained that this was an opportunity, the only surefire way to experience this classic layout. And then, besides being at one of the nation's temples of truly public golf, where the fee is a most plebian $31, I'd be playing the very track Tiger and Vijay and Sergio would be playing in the Open, hitting (in the broadest sense) the same drives and approaches, the same chips and putts.

She shrugged and left me to my planning. I timed it so I'd get to the course just around midnight, which, sad to say, is well past my usual bedtime. I'd fall dead asleep and power-nap until 4:30, when the man supposedly came out. I'd snag my early time, then power-nap again, until the dawn broke and I'd head to the range for a bucket of balls and a big coffee and prepare myself to bring the lengthy and magnificent Black Course to its knees as the dew burned off the gleaming, majestic fairways.

A fine stratagem indeed, but now, in the parking lot, I am having trouble with the sleep part. The seats are folded down, and if I lie diagonally, I can almost stretch out fully. Beside me is my golf bag, the two of us scrunched together in the narrow space between the wheel wells, so that if I shift, the irons click-clack and the headcovers tickle my face. I have brought everything I need--or at least, what I thought I would need--for a good night's rest: (1) down sleeping bag, from long-ago camp days, moldy-smelling in the seams; (2) corduroy couch pillow, from where, I don't know; (3) earplugs; (4) an exhaustive history of the Pacific air war during World War II; (5) a fresh pint of Dewar's.

None of the above is of much use, however, because what I imagined would be a serene encampment of slumbering golfers is in reality a drive-up nighttime men's club, replete with music, drinking, chatter, and a regimented protocol: You park on the inside curve of a big circular lot with numbered spots, backing your car in so you can drive directly out. At the appointed hour, a park ranger emerges with a flashlight and a wheel of those tickets they use at raffles; everybody starts his engine, and in order you roll up and receive up to four tickets, depending on how many are in your car.

I didn't know about the backing-in rule, so the fellow in the purple GTO in the next slot honked and rolled down his window and barked, "Swing it around, buddy," which I did, causing a brief but clearly distressing logjam for the cars behind me, as indicated by a not-quite supportive round of horn bursts--my rookie welcome. Since then, I've been bolt awake, wired with activity and the discomfiting presence of other people.

Consider Mr. GTO, who has fired up what looks like a major-league doobie and tuned in the classic rock station at 80 decibels, thud-thudding my windows. The deejay (like every other classic rock deejay at this hour) is spinning "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC. And then there's Mr. Land Rover, who, with every last dome light on in his high-hatted vehicle, is working on a 101 acrostics book, expert edition. Don't we all need our rest to prepare for the labors of the coming day? I get out in the chilly air ready to offer manly homilies on the virtues of dimmed lights and soft music when I see that the parking lot has been filled, and that most of the cars' occupants are not snoring away but restlessly milling around in their caps and shorts, talking golf.

There are the salty regulars, mingling with tallboy Buds and smokes--night-shift guys and retirees who've known each other for years, this their only country club, and who group up in the lead cars for the first tee times of the day so they can rip through in three hours and get back home for breakfast and a nap. There are also tourists here: a foursome of lanky young Swedes making a yearly pilgrimage, some natty-looking dudes from the Bay Area, and a father-son twosome visiting from Indiana, Mom and Sis back at the hotel in Manhattan sleeping off a sweet NYC evening of La Caravelle and "The Lion King."

It must be that time, because here comes the guy with the flashlight. Everybody gets back in the cars, and we roll out and form the conga line. When I finally park again and get called inside to the clubhouse window, I'm nearly overcome by a repeating wave of the jitters, the way I used to feel in college when I'd attempt an all-nighter and succeed only in making myself ill from too much coffee and too many Tootsie Rolls. Though there's an open spot at 6:08, I wonder if I'll be able even to hold a club, so when the lady asks again, I say the 12:36 is just fine with me, already warming with the thought of seven and a half good hours of sleep. See you later, guys. It's been real.

Postscript: Glorious day, excellent course condition, three nice fellows as partners. The one with the ugliest swing beat us silly. Suspected he was using an illegal ball, as he never let anyone mark it on the greens. I shot 83, which on any other day would have been 93. The course is long. On most of the par 4s, I was hitting a 3-wood for my approaches, but I was pure magic with the 60-degree wedge, saving pars when I should have made doubles. Best 18-hour round of my life.

Chang-rae Lee is the author of two novels, Native Speaker (1995) and A Gesture Life (1999). This article is excerpted from The Ultimate Golf Book, edited by Charles McGrath and David McCormick, [C]2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company, 272 pages, $40. Reprinted with permission.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Golf Digest Companies

Chang-rae Lee's Homecoming, Published in the April 2004 Issue of Golf Digest

The Homecoming

A native son returns to sample the heights and delights of golf on the other side of the world

BY CHANG-RAE LEE

Golf in Korea is a pretty exalted affair, and the reasons are clear: There are an estimated 2.5 million golfers in Korea, but a mere 50 public-access courses, most of which are resort tracks where the least expensive green fee is $100, plus $60 for the mandatory caddie or cart. The other 120 golf courses in the country are private, super-exclusive clubs with mid-six figure initiation fees. So it figures that most of the nation's golfers are driving-range players--some even exclusively so--and only if you're a tycoon or a high-level employee or client of one of the huge conglomerates can you play regularly at some of the loveliest, most opulent golf clubs in Asia.

But it seemed only right to begin at the driving range. I'm with my uncle and aunt in Ilsan, a newer suburban area 15 miles northwest of Seoul. At breakfast we decide that the first day of my return to the homeland should in part be spent hitting balls. The greatest part, naturally, will be devoted to eating and communing with other relatives, but to help ease my adjustment to the local time we agree that there is nothing better for jet lag than working through a couple hundred balls. They're avid golfers, and are lucky enough to belong to one of the few non-billionaires clubs in the area. But because it's 90 minutes away, and a round takes at least six hours to play, they're lucky if they can get out once a week during the season. As such, they also have a $1,000 annual range "membership" that allows them to hit unlimited balls close to home.

The netted range, small by American standards, is a double-decker jammed among houses and shops on the outskirts of the town. It's exceedingly clean and spiffy, more like a fancy health club than your average cruddy public range with frayed mats and balls knocked clean of dimples. We have a "tee time," too, and as my aunt checks us in at the front desk the panel of lights behind the receptionist clicks on at the corresponding second-floor stalls.

Hitting balls is a nifty arrangement. You tap a small sewing machine-type pedal with your club, and a mechanical arm extends and deftly places a ball on the tee or drops it on the mat. You can also set the machine on auto-load, and I get into a fairly rapid rhythm, the meter of the ball machine and me eventually grooving into a weird kind of anapestic chant, whack-shoot-shoo, whack-shoot-shoo, and I find myself feeling oddly monk-like, even shutting my eyes for several swings. The mats are high-end, the filaments of the synthetic grass stout enough to prop the ball to a perfect lie but still supple and wispy, the rubber beneath just spongy enough to let you go at the ball without fear of damaging the shaft or your wrists. There are mini-refrigerators filled with cold, moist hand towels, and an attendant constantly sweeps the stalls and empties ashtrays and tidies the pillows of the lounge chairs and sofas arranged about the stalls.

The most disarming feature, however, isn't a detail of the facility but the patrons themselves, divided equally by gender, who to the last seem to own solid 10-handicap swings--something I'm not quite used to seeing at the local range back home, where the strokes are varied and brutal. These golfers aren't all skilled, of course, the shanks and duffs abounding, but you can easily imagine they soon will be, as many, much like the two chic 20-something women taking a lesson next to me, had clearly been instructed by a professional. The women are slickly coutured in clingy black pants and tops, funky Swedish golf shoes, their salon-perfect hair and makeup done up a la Grace Park of the LPGA. And as I eavesdrop on their conversation when the pro takes a coffee break, I'm not at all surprised to hear that they aren't gossiping about their boyfriends but rather seriously theorizing on grip pressure and weight shift and a full release, then duly demonstrating for each other how it ought to be done. They have smooth, long swings, and hit it far. People take golf seriously here, even if they'll never hit into anything but a net. Perhaps if I lived here, too, I'd be content with just visiting the range, given how darn nice it is, and then because I always depart a session having played an immensely satisfying and easeful round of perfect-lie, bogey-free golf, this the native ground of my scratch-golfer self, forever uncowed, risk-loving, brilliantly bending the ball left and right.

But then I would have missed perhaps the most pleasurable, luxurious golf I will ever experience, my excruciatingly real and unsteady play notwithstanding. Several days later my contact in Seoul, Seon-Keun (S.K.) Lee, Editor-in-Chief of Golf Digest Korea, and the magazine's president pick me up at dawn for the drive to our first course. My hosts are wearing business suits, and I'm thankful to be dressed similarly, as I've been advised by knowledgeable friends that in Korea it's poor form to show up at the club in your playing clothes, even if it's a certainty you won't make it to the office that day, even if it's a weekend. I like the idea of dressing up for golf, partly because I rarely dress up for anything, partly because there's always a tangle of guilt in my gut when I head off to play (all that time, all that money), a stubborn knot which the rigor of my suit jacket and stiff wingtips quickly splices, as I can pretend I'm just another salary-man riding off to work, if in a fragrant limousine.

I will play three rounds with S.K., the fourth compliments of the head of one of the country's major newspapers. In terms of prestige and exclusiveness, S.K. tells me my routing will be like visiting New York and playing Shinnecock, Winged Foot, Baltusrol and Pine Valley over a long weekend, and that it's unlikely that anyone has ever played four such consecutive rounds in the history of Korean golf. I am deeply honored, of course, if also somewhat horrified, assuming the golf gods will surely disapprove of my ascension to such a rarefied set of tee boxes, and likely strike me down with a white-hot 1-iron (or worse, instill me with the hubristic notion of replacing my 5-wood with one).

The clubs near Seoul are Anyang Benest (short for "Best Nest") and Midas, which represent the zenith of Korean golf: Midas one of the newest clubs, a hilltop refuge for billionaires, Anyang the lushly manicured grand dame. The other two golf courses, Pinx and Nine Bridges, are on Jeju, the semi-tropical resort island just south of the Korean peninsula famed for the beauty of its diver-women and the intense flavor of its black-bristled swine. I'd been there many years before on a trip with my parents and remembered the island being overrun not by lovely mermaids or tasty pigs but by scores of newlyweds slow-touring the countryside on horseback, the brides sitting demurely side-saddle and often wearing traditional Korean dress, the grooms dutifully leading the horses on foot. I'll focus here on Anyang, for although there are clear differences in style (patrician Anyang, opulent Midas, Western-leaning Nine Bridges, haute-designed Pinx), the consistency of the details of the club setup and operation is astounding.

We are greeted at the Anyang clubhouse by a phalanx of uniformed staff (no teenagers in khakis and club-logo shirts here) and with an employee-to-guest ratio that appears to be around 5-to-1 (most of the house staff attractive young women in form-fitting outfits and lots of makeup), the place more like a luxury boutique hotel than a golf club. After changing we have a luscious traditional abalone porridge for breakfast, the first of three meals we'll have at the club today.

At the first tee, we are warmly welcomed with greetings and bows by the caddie master, golf club manager and the two caddies. The senior caddie, a gregarious young woman named Ms. Kim, immediately leads us in a vigorous pre-round stretch session, then hands me my driver and describes the hole and the ideal shot. After my drive and approach she seems to know all of my yardages, and for the rest of the round she'll just hand me a club and point the way and sweetly remind me to swing smoothly. And although my score certainly won't reflect it, the round is indeed silky smooth, almost disconcertingly effortless, Ms. Kim even marking my ball for me on the greens, so that the only time I handle it is to tee it up, or when I have to reach into the bag after spraying one into a pond. Playing bogey golf has never been so pleasing.

But the food is the real glory. I'm a food guy, and normally I'd never go near any golf club if I were looking for a fine meal, but at Anyang (and the others) the fare is outstanding, the equal of any restaurant in Seoul, which I realize the masters-of-the-universe members no doubt expect. The best part is that on Korean courses there are two places (called "shade houses") to rest and eat and drink, after the sixth and 12th holes, exquisitely designed climate-controlled cottages where you order from a menu of noodles and spicy casseroles and freshly made juices and herbal teas. No hot dogs or sodden chicken wraps here. My favorite dish is a dessert of chilled persimmon compote (from trees on the Anyang grounds), sweet and bursting with the tangy flavor, a perfect follow-up to my savory black bean noodles. And as we play the 12th, instead of setting up my shot I'm considering the merits of having another bowl of noodles--this time, buckwheat in cold bouillon--but opt instead for a fresh strawberry juice, as I know we're to have a "simple" lunch after the round (a tasty multi-course menu, it turns out, of sashimi, scallion fritters, and a spicy fish stew, along with lots of OB lager).

After the round Ms. Kim gives me a friendly hug, and we retire to the locker room, which is like the ultra-high end spa of a Four Seasons in Bali or Thailand, the granite-paneled toilette area dramatically lighted and piped-in with soft classical music. The main feature here, behind automatic sliding-glass doors, is the moh-gyoak-tahng, or the bath; imagine a sumptuous Roman setup of the sort you'd see in a Burton-Taylor picture, but sleekly recast into three slate-lined plunge pools (cool, hot, hotter), looking out through a huge wall of glass onto an exquisite rock and flower garden. But you don't just jump in; there's a way of the bath, namely that you strip down to your skivvies at your locker, then strip completely at another, smaller, set of lockers next to the showers, where you scrub yourself clean with rough brushes and loofahs and stand under the cascade of a Frisbee-size shower head before finally wading into one of the communal tubs for the long, good soak. And it is here, in the mineral-fortified water, that I begin to recount the day, literally, all the shots realized (and not), all the drinks and dishes consumed (and not), and I now understand why playing a round in Korea takes the entire day: because you very much want it to. For here you want to escape the pace and high pressure and noxious air of the city, you want to linger in the "shade houses" and along the fairways redolent of camellia and wild rose, you want to flirt with your expert white-gloved caddie, you want your fill of the sweet and the savory, and then, in between, play the great game, too. At least just a bit.

Chang-rae Lee's third novel, Aloft, is being published in March. His last piece for Golf Digest was on camping out for a tee time at Bethpage State Park in June 2002.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Golf Digest Companies