Inheriting the job of caring for Bethpage

One year later, life is much quieter at Bethpage State Park and, as park director Dave Catalano said, "a lot drier." Still, the place is busy. The people who work there are focused on making the courses as good as they possibly can be for golfers, even if the golfers aren't playing for the U.S. Open trophy.

"I don't want to say anticlimactic, but it's sort of back to business," said Andy Wilson, who was one of Craig Currier's assistants last June and has since been promoted to replace his boss as superintendent of the five courses.

Last May and June were the weeks that superintendents and their staffs live for. Preparing for a major championship is, in effect, their version of an Open. "We were almost in the mode of not wanting to screw it up because the place was perfect," Wilson said. "You didn't want an oil leak on a green or something."

Then, after years of getting everything just right on the Black Course, a weeklong deluge forced the staff into sheer emergency mode. They had to forget about everything except frantically pumping, sweeping and squeegeeing water away to make the course playable. "That was depressing," Wilson said. "That was probably the hardest week of work we ever did."

The U.S. Golf Association praised Currier and his crew, the course survived and daily-fee golfers were back on the Black the next week.

Currier, renowned for the condition of all five courses, was recruited away late in the year by Glen Oaks, a private club in Old Westbury. Wilson was given the chance to put into practice what he had learned in 12 years working for Currier.

"The most important thing I got was to have persistence, and then persistence again. It's a demanding job," Wilson said. "Being here is the main thing, with the amount of moving parts. There's always something different coming up every day."

Wilson says his career is "sort of a Dave Catalano story," referring to the fact that he is a Bethpage kid who started working at the park as a summer job and moved up the ranks. He earned a degree in English from Fairfield and wasn't sure how he was going to use it.

"I like being out here," he said last week, having watched the area's top golfers finish the Long Island Open on the Red Course. "Once they announced the Open, that's when I went to Rutgers and got my turf degree and I started working with Craig."

He was assigned to the Green Course and became heavily involved in experimental programs to limit the use of fertilizer and pesticides. He also got a taste of administration. "Craig would readily admit he was not a big paperwork guy so I had a lot of those responsibilities, too," he said. "I was getting supplies for everybody else.

"There are a lot of moving parts here," Wilson said. "Two minutes after you try to do something, someone is going in one direction, someone else is going in another direction. That's where it gets tricky. There are a lot of balls in the air, a lot of juggling to do."

Wilson's promotion is a tribute to the dozens of workers who, Catalano points out, never received the media acclaim that Currier and Catalano did for two Opens.

"You've got the guys cutting the rough, the guys cutting the greens, the guys raking the bunkers, the guys changing the holes and the guys supervising them. And then there's another 40 guys. It often gets lost," the park director said.

Catalano's phone isn't constantly being called by officials, dignitaries or reporters, which is good and bad. "When you've hosted the world's most important golf tournament, it's hard not to miss the action, the excitement," he said. "But we still have the best golf complex in the country."