The day we played The Monster, Bethpage Black

Posted by Michael on 9 July 2010 | 2 Comments | Tags: Bethpage Black, A W Tillinghast, New York, US Open

Bethpage Black course is a unique beast. Entirely run by the State of New York, they have developed this course over the last few years so that now it is a course of true championship quality and has proved this by hosting two fantastic US Opens in 2002 and 2009.

Bethpage Black is a course many people can relate to because they have played it before (like my folks when they came to NYC last year)  Being a public course anyone can get a game.  Getting a tee time here can be tough and the â??right wayâ?? of ensuring you can play is to camp out in the parking lot for one of the first 6 tee times that are left free and available every day.  We intended to try and sneak one such spot before the pro at Winged Foot kindly made a call for us and before we knew it we had an 1157am guaranteed spot.

Despite our tee time we still camped out to get the full Bethpage experience but were surprised at the lack of festivity around the parking lot.  This was probably because it was the 4^th of July in the morning which a family day here and so we caught Bethpage on an uncharacteristically slow day.  Instead of the normal 1800 or so golfers playing on the 6 golf courses in the complex there were probably only 1400 todayâ?¦ That is about as many rounds as are played a year on some of the courses weâ??ve been playing recentlyâ?¦ (note: it sounds like Bethpage Red is a course worth playing as well if youâ??re in the area)

The black course is a monster of a golf course.  Itâ??s about 7500 yards, but is stretched right back to 8000 for the Open.  And it is grand â?? each hole has a huge footprint and often includes significant undulations. Itâ??s a solid walk around here particularly when it is 95 degrees.  When we met Doug Batty at Bel Air (kiwi pro who qualified for the 2009 Open) he told us about his experience playing  here when shot a pair of 74â??s and was hitting 4 iron or 3 wood into almost every green - after today I can understand where he was coming from.  For the 2009 Open it was wet and there was no roll and some of these par fours would be nearly impossible.  You really need to bomb your driver here and it was a good thing that we were both hitting the ball pretty well as the length of the course combined with the wind and the relentless heat made it tough going. 

Iâ??ve put together a slideshow of the course (below) which has some great photographs of this Tillinghast monster (I understand that it was recently redesigned by Rees Jones).  You will see that the bunkering here is out of this world and the design of the holes is classical and strong.  There arenâ??t many scoring opportunities around here.  But the green complexes here are very different to the Tillinghast greens we have been playing at Winged Foot and Somerset Hills as they are generally very flat although as the round went on the later holes started to have more of a pronounced tilt to the greens.

Some of the pictures in the slideshow been given to us from our playing partner, Gary, who photographed the course a year or so ago.  Gary was a really enthusiastic guy who took a rather â??zenâ?? attitude to golf. He is a landscape gardener and for Gary the best part of golf is the walk and heâ??s not going to let his game get in the way of the beauty of a golf course. A good philosophy indeed.  We were also joined by Maurice who made a pretty good fist at suggesting golf courses to play in and around the greater New York areaâ?¦

There is a huge difference between public and private golf courses in the US.  The rigmarole to get on the golf course here reminds me of an amusement park. You go to the tellers, pay your green fee where you are given a bracelet to wear which you then take to the starter who cuts the bracelet and allows you through to the first tee.  There are people swilling around everywhere and a 5 and a half hour round beckons.  What is cool is that the public have access to this world class golf course and residents of NY can play here for about $40 ($150 for out of towners). 

I hate to say this but the decorum of Bethpage did not match the quality of the golf course.  There were more than a few loudmouths floating around and golfing attire appeared to be optional.  But the thing that stood out to me was the lack of respect shown by the players to the golf course.  One of the first things I was taught was that  you should try to leave the golf course it in better condition than you found it.  And fixing pitch marks was something to take pride in as it meant that you had hit the green!  So it is a real shame that the patrons here donâ??t seem to appreciate or respect the gem that the state is providing for them.   The greens were covered in pitch marks and the bunkers were often left un-raked.  These bunkers are not designed to be left unkempt.  Jamie described the sand as like fresh powder on a skifield and you can only image the craters that were left all through the bunkers by the time we got to the back nine in the mid afternoon.  I will disclose that this particularly agitated me as I was grinding out a decent round only to find myself in three such huge craters and the resulting double, double, triple, quickly put an end to a decent round (I have subsequently learnt that many of the locals play a local rule that if you go into a bunker here you can rake it and then place your ball.  But thatâ??s just not cricket and we play the ball as it lies).

After golf we headed out along Long Island. With nowhere to play the next day we just cruised right out to the point at Montauk, just missing the 4^th of July fireworks after a protracted session catching up on our admin at Starbucks.   Once out on the Point we found a camping area and nestled in for another night in Dodgy â?? one of the last as weâ??ve found a buyer for him â?? two swiss guys who are traveling across the US over two months in the reverse of what weâ??ve just done. Brilliant.