Bethpage (Black (&blue) & Red)

 Thursday and Friday my friend Josh (pictured below) and I made the trek to central Long Island for a chance at playing “the People’s Golf Course,” aka Bethpage Black.  

As you may know, Black was built in the 30s by the WPA and designed by famed (rightly) architect AW Tillinghast.  He also designed the less famous Red course and the Blue — which has undertaken extensive changes since the mid 30s. 

As the sign below indicates, the Black course is infamously hard.  

No report on the Black course is worthwhile without a discussion of the difficulty of getting onto the course.  Non-residents (aka “us”) can try to get a tee time online 5 days ahead of time at 7 PM.  AS in, Saturday for the next Thursday.   At exactly 7 PM on Saturday there was ONE tee time! 5 PM.  Josh got it. !!!  (if that didn’t work, then you either wait at the gate at 430 Thursday morning or walk up later and home there’s an available time).  By the time we got to Bethpage, we had swapped tee times back from 5 to 2:40 — the weather looked awful (look at those clouds in the background of the picture).

Okay, the Black is remarkably, but not originally, hard.  First, it is very long — from the old man tees it was 6200 yards (the course I played on Monday OTOH was 4100 and played to a higher par!).  Second, the rough is extraordinarly penal.  You were lucky to find your ball (we did, all of them) but even if you did, you had no chance of getting on the green, because (as the picture shows you) there are many sand traps guarding the greens (a Tillinghast thing) And they are big and deep and penal.  It was a long day of laying up out of the rough, or sometimes the fairway, and trying to hit a wedge shot close enough to save par.  

You have to walk the Black.  We took a caddy, named Michael, who was a recent college grad who was making money for grad school.  At $90 per bag, plus tip, he did alright on gathering coin to go on to grad school.  He carried both bags, FYI.

To get to the point, it is a long walk.   It is also very hilly, as can be seen by this picture toward the clubhouse from the 18th tee. 

Finally, you may wonder about the weather: we started in dry but threatening conditions; I put on my rain slicker on 2 in a light rain and took it off when it stopped on 4, and we played to 15 before it came down hard.  And the last 4 holes are exceptionally long and hard.  We weren’t soaked when we finished, but plenty wet. 

I took 20,000 steps on the day, twice what someone recommends to be fit.  I was more than doubly fit when it was over. 

I did NOT enjoy the Black.  Josh seemed to revel in the masochism.  When I told our playing partners Friday (we had none Thursday) that I was both damaged in body and in psyche, they agreed that was a correct interpretation. 

Then, to the supposedly easier Red. 

First, we looked all week on the website, from Sunday at 7 till even during the round on Thursday and after (Josh famously asked in the middle of a hole whether a 612 tee time was okay and I said yes and he responded “damn! too late!” ), without success.  We showed up at 7 am Friday without a tee time.  But on the board were several times for the Red; the first was at 1120.  We OC took it.  We killed the time with putting, watching people tee off, breakfast (the food there is pretty good, if, not surprisingly on LI, pricey) and watching the USWNT live from Tokyo in a match that went happily to penalty kicks, as we were killing time. 

The picture of 18 shows that it was a much different day on the Red — burning sun the whole day. 

The Red from the old man (is that “OG”?) tees is only 100 yards shorter than Black.  Supposedly.  But the course is much more playable, mainly because the rough is not penal.  I hit my first tee ball into the left hand rough and was able to hit it on the green from 150 yards uphill.  No way you even try that on the Black.  

The Red is notorious because most of the par 4s have doglegs and I thought a preponderous of right hand ones (which was more comfortable for me as I was working the ball well from left to right).  The 13th, a shortish par 4, has bunkers down the CENTER of the fairway, on a rather straight hole.  None of the par 3s was particularly memorable and there were only 2 par 5s (the most memorable hole on the Black is the par 3 8th, set over a pond, the only water on any of the courses, we were told).  

You also got to ride carts on the Red, which didn’t speed up the round as the course was full (unlike in the threatening rain the afternoon before).  

Is the Red the great course that the Black probably is? No.  But it is much more playable and “fun” (though Josh liked the pain of the Black) than its big sibling. 

All in all, the Bethpage facility is quality and quantity golf.  There are 5 courses there.  And the price tag is not so high — the Red was only $90 plus cart.  Which isn’t bad for NYC area quality golf. 

It is worth the journey to homage to Mr Tillinghast (and by extension President Roosevelt)’s work; to say you played a top US public and a place where they’ll play the Ryder Cup in 3 years.  And to stand in front of a warning sign and then say “I survived the Beast that is the Black!”