(FORTUNE Magazine) – Dave Catalano, the director of Bethpage State Park in Farmingdale, N.Y., and the gatekeeper of its acclaimed Black course, should be getting combat pay. It's 5:23 P.M. on a recent Friday, and instead of kicking off his shoes and pouring himself a cold one, Catalano, 54, is stuck in the Bethpage parking lot, hearing out another desperate golfer trying to talk his way onto what is about to be recognized as one of the greatest golf courses in America.

Bethpage Black will host the 102nd U.S. Open June 13-16, and the public's rush to play the course, always intense, has reached a crescendo. Catalano's adversary on this day is nimble: He's a lawyer, and he obviously paid attention in trial advocacy class. In two hours he has talked his way past two of Catalano's employees. After 15 minutes Catalano comes to an unusual decision: He says he'll look into the matter further and sends the man on his way with the promise of a future tee time if his claim holds up. (Epilogue: It does.)

Another day, another donnybrook at the Black. "The lengths people go to to play on this golf course," Catalano says. "It's the funniest thing."

Well, not ha-ha funny. The paucity of public courses on Long Island, and the frustrations of players who can't crack the Black, lend an edgy undercurrent to the otherwise sleepy towns of Bethpage and Farmingdale (the actual address of the park). If New York's other U.S. Open, in nearby Flushing, Queens, can be called the World's Toughest Tennis, this U.S. Open--the first to be played at a publicly owned munici-pal course--is surely the World's Toughest Golf. Bring your woods, putter, irons, and tire iron. Despite its peaceful sounding address (99 Quaker Meetinghouse Road), Bethpage Black feels more like the center of a battleground than a state park.

The Black is known for two things: being insanely hard--at 7,214 yards this will be the longest Open course ever, by one yard--and being an insanely difficult place to get a tee time. They are awarded via a telephone call-in system, but winning takes fast fingers and dumb luck. Only about 15 tee times are left open each day for walk-up players, who sleep in their cars in the famed Bethpage Walk Up Car Line, where they abide by the rules--no leaving the car for more than an hour, primary among them--or risk having their tires flattened in the dead of night by their line-mates. The disputes are so frequent that the regulars hardly take notice anymore. "It's usually just guys face-to-face, spittin' on each other," says 45-year-old Bethpage veteran Louis Pow. "One person always backs off."

The Black may be the epicenter of edgy encounters, but it's hardly unique in central Long Island; you've got to do something pretty outrageous around here to make people take notice. Something tabloid-worthy, to start. Ten miles southwest of the course is Roosevelt High, the alma mater of shock-jock emeritus Howard Stern and basketball great/tennis father Julius Erving. Just east of there is Massapequa, where Joey Buttafuoco romanced the Long Island Lolita, Amy Fisher, in his garage. The town has also been home, at various times, to the feisty Baldwin brothers (Alec, Billy, Harpo, et al.); Jim Bakker-temptress Jessica Hahn; and comedian Jerry Seinfeld. East of Massapequa, six miles south of Bethpage, is The Amityville Horror house, where in 1974 Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his parents and four siblings, forever haunting the place--or so the story goes.

Edgy? Raw? Even the name of the most popular watering hole in Farmingdale, and the best place to spot players during the Open, sounds like a threat: 56th Fighter Group. The restaurant hosts the biggest happy hour on Long Island and a massive collection of World War II memorabilia. In case anybody gets out of line, three fighter planes are parked in the backyard. (Also in the backyard is Republic Airport, which will be used during the Open by players and corporate bigwigs with private jets, and is where Erik R. Lindbergh took off on May 1 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of his grandfather Charles' flight from New York to Paris.)

Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, against this combat zone of a backdrop, that the Black course is a tinderbox. Golfers tell of being yelled at by the starter for setting down their bags on the hallowed turf of the 1st tee--three years before the Open. The latest dispute is over who designed the course, the famed A.W. Tillinghast or the not-so-famed Joseph H. Burbeck. Burbeck's son, Joe, says the credit belongs to his father, and Golf Digest, for one, agrees; in its June issue the magazine says it will henceforth credit Burbeck. Catalano says the park has no plans to remove a bronze plate that honors Tillinghast.

Whoever designed the course, which opened in 1936, it remains the most consistent attraction for Bethpage and Farmingdale. That distinction used to fall to the Grumman Corp., a defense contractor. In 1986, Grumman employed 26,000 people on Long Island, most of them in Bethpage. The company built the E-2C Hawkeye--the odd-looking prop plane with a satellite dish on its back--for the Navy and the lunar module that put Neil Armstrong on the moon. But with Defense Department cuts in the late '80s, among other factors, the company--now Northrop Grumman--began to slash its work force. Specializing in information warfare, it employs only 1,600 people in Bethpage.

"Everyone said, 'That's it. That's the end of Bethpage,'" says John Coumatos, one of the owners of B.K. Sweeney's Parkside Tavern--another likely hot spot for celebrity sightings during Open week. (Actors Samuel L. Jackson and Richard Roundtree lunched there after playing the Black a few years ago.) Bethpage survived, though, thanks to an influx of smaller businesses. The town, and others nearby, are now poised to have a huge summer: The tournament is expected to generate a $70 million windfall. "It's a revitalization," says Coumatos.

Chamber of Commerce President Gary Bretton, who owns Bretton's Deli, across from Sweeney's, hopes Coumatos is right, especially in the case of small businesses like theirs. Sweeney's has already managed to cash in: Known for its ribs, the restaurant plans to dish out about 2,000 lunches a day to tournament volunteers. Bretton, however, isn't so sure about this "revitalization." "It's a stretch to say that," he says, continuing the area's fine contrarian tradition. "Put it this way: It's helped revitalize the town." Spoken like a true Bethpage-ian.