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.

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