BIG, BOLD and a BRUTE – Bethpage Black

I had been both anticipating and dreading the trip to New York to play Bethpage Black (#8 on the Current Ranking).  I certainly wanted to experience the public course that has hosted two U. S. Opens and will host the 2019 PGA Championship and the 2024 Ryder Cup, but I really dread driving in and around large cities that I am not yet familiar.  New York City qualifies as both large and unfamiliar.  It was always going to be a challenge to secure a tee time on this famous track as New York residents get first crack at the times since this is part of the state park system.  They keep several times open for walk ups so we were planning on arriving in the parking lot by 4:00 AM with the hope of securing a tee time.

The course was scheduled to be closed on the Monday and Wednesday of the week that we were to be there so Tuesday was our only shot.  As we watched  the weather in the days leading to Tuesday, it did not look good.  The forecast was for 100% chance of rain.  On Saturday, the day before we were scheduled to leave, I went on the Bethpage website and saw there was a cancellation for Sunday afternoon and there was an opening for a twosome at 2:27.  I quickly booked that spot and informed Marilyn that we would be leaving for New York in 4 hours instead of the next day.  After a nine hour drive on Saturday and four more hours on Sunday morning, we were having lunch at Bethpage eagerly awaiting our afternoon round.

The round at Bethpage was one of the toughest that I have played anywhere but it was still enjoyable to experience this championship course.  It is just one of five courses at the Bethpage complex but by far the most difficult.  Despite the difficulty, every tee time is taken every day.  We golfers all want to play on a famous course, at least once.  There are several things that make the Black such a challenge.  It is very long, 6,600 yards for me with a slope of 148 and an unbelievable 6,200 yards with a slope of 150 for Marilyn.  That is probably why Marilyn was the only woman we saw on the Black that day.

The fairways are narrow.  The rough is long but more importantly, it is the thickest most lush rough that I have ever played.  If you are just 3 feet off the fairway or one foot off a green, the ability to make a par is in serious peril.  The bunkers have a lot of very soft sand which makes it easy for balls to plug and difficult to consistently play from them.  So other than the length, narrow fairways, the rough and the bunkers, Bethpage Black is a piece of cake.  Despite the toughness of this course, it is a true championship golf course that is not tricked up and a great test for top players.  The greens are large, firm and fast but not overwhelmingly undulated.  I really like Bethpage Black and would love to play it again but perhaps just once a year.  It is not one of my Top 50 most enjoyable courses that I have played but it is not supposed to be.  It was built to be a tough, true test of golf for the best players and it most certainly is.  A. W. Tillinghast built a real masterpiece for the people of New York and I really look forward to watching the 2019 PGA Championship next May.  It was a long difficult drive to get to Long Island to play Bethpage Black, but one that will provide lifetime memories and a golf experience that will be one our best.

Day two of the New York trip took us to the Bronx and our round at Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point (#96 on Current Ranking).  Our son Jason was kind enough to drive 5 hours from Vermont to join us for this round after visiting his brother Scott.  This was after flying in from his home in Dallas.  The idea was to play Ferry Point with us on Monday and then play Bethpage Black with us on Tuesday.  Because of the incoming rain event on Tuesday and us moving that round to Sunday, he did not get to play the Black.  Another big reason for him coming in was so he could join me at 4:00 AM in the Bethpage parking lot to secure of tee time.  That being said, we did enjoy our day together at Ferry Point.

This course is located in an area so strange to us and so different than all the other courses we have played that it was a unique experience.  Jack Nicklaus was brought in to build a course for the city of New York on a reclaimed landfill.  It is located next to the Whitestone Bridge and there are also high rise low income housing next to several holes on the back nine.  The skyline of Manhattan is in view from many of the holes which adds another dimension to this course.  Because of the landfill under the course, there are no trees but many rolling mounds covered with high grasses to provide some definition to the course layout.

Ferry Point is in wonderful condition and like most Nicklaus courses, the fairways are fairly wide but if you are driving it a little crooked on this course you will be spending a lot of time searching for your ball in the tall fescue on the mounds.  The greens were fast and firm with a lot of roll off areas that provide some nice strategic options for recovery.  I liked the course and Nicklaus did a wonderful job when you consider the site he had to work with, but I do not feel it is a Top 100 course and like the other two Trump courses that we have played, it is a self-proclaimed testament to himself.  The city of New York owns the course but the Trump Company manages the facility.  Unlike Bethpage, it does not have the atmosphere of a muni as Trump runs it like a private club with the fees they charge and Trump’s name and family crest is everywhere you look.  Because of this, I have a difficult time enjoying his courses as much as I probably should.  Tom Coyne, author of A Course Called Scotland, expressed his thoughts on this much more eloquently than I could so I have included an exert from his book about Trump’s International Golf Links of Scotland.

“I endeavored to try to overlook such hubris, hopeful that his course honored the land or the community of Balmedie, near Aberdeen.  It was an effort that I would be spared.  In the construction of his Aberdeen links, the developer didn’t play well with his neighbors.  Anthony Baxter’s award-winning documentary You’ve Been Trumped (which the developer’s lawyers tried to block from airing on the BBC after Baxter was arrested for filming on the Aberdeen worksite-so much for the Scottish Right to Roam) shows the American bullying his course into existence.  He accused one longtime resident whose farm was perceived as an eyesore against a future luxury hotel of living “like a pig” in “disgusting” and “slum-like” conditions.  The farmer was later voted “Scotsman of the Year” at the Spirit of Scotland Awards by his countrymen for holding out.  Eminent domain threatened the homes of long-standing Balmedie denizens, and the 67,000 promised jobs for locals came in closer to 150.  A ninety-year old woman who lived next to the site had her clean water supply cut off, not for days but for years.  Such large-scale construction was an untidy business,  Might the ends justify the means if what had been created lived up to its billing as the greatest golf course in the world?

If only it were the greatest golf course in Aberdeen.  His International Links was good – very good: an extraordinarily dramatic layout, a course of eighteen signature holes.  It played like a meal of exclusively mains, no starters or salad, just T-bone after T-bone, all overcooked with a slathering of ketchup.  It felt forced.  Manufactured.  Whether it was the six sets of tees, the ten-foot-wide cart paths cut into the dunes (I was told the developer insisted on paths wide enough for golf carts to pass one another), the forced walks to another sky-scraping tee box, the ubiquitous signage directing golfers to so many different tees – there were fewer arrows at an airport – the placards and markers smothered with his heraldry (is there anything less regal than an American’s faux royal crest?), or just the knowledge of how much earth had been moved in its construction, the place seemed so relentlessly over-the-top that I couldn’t shake the notion that I was playing a man-made imitation.  Perhaps all the coverage of its creation gave me too much insight into how this particular sausage was made”

Our third and last course to play on this short trip was the Rick Smith design at Turning Stone Resort called Shenendoah (#95 Last Ranked in 2007).  Shenendoah was built in in 2000 and Smith was brought back to renovate and reroute the course in 2016.  He created seven new holes to add to 11 remodeled holes from the original routing.  I did not realize that some of the holes were new at the time we played it so when I found out, it made sense that my GPS was understandably confused.  I had a laser range finder with me and that solved the yardage problem.  I really enjoyed this course as it was in immaculate condition, had wide fairways and tremendous greens.  Even the bunkers were outstanding in their design, how they visually fit the hole and their outstanding maintenance.  Every bunker was neatly edged and hand raked and the sand was much easier to negotiate than the soft sand at Bethpage Black.  Teeing options were fair with five choices that ranged from 4,813 to 7,013 yards.

The holes provided a very good variety by providing a few water hazards, strategic bunker placement, short and long holes and gentle elevation changes.  I have played three Smith designs now including Treetops and Arcadia Bluffs in Michigan and have become a big fan of his courses.  He is probably better known as a golf instructor but his course designs are fair, challenging, interesting and visually appealing and all of this makes them fun to play. 

Turning Stone has two other courses that are in the current Top 100 – Atunyote and Kaluhyote which I discussed in an earlier post – but do not overlook Shenendoah.  I feel it is a match for Atunyote which is a beautiful layout and better than Kaluyote which is a fine course but is more difficult than fun.  If going to Turning Stone to play golf be sure to ask for the golf package which can save you on the room cost and the golf green fees.  It has a very large casino and a large hotel tower but I would highly recommend staying at The Lodge which is much more quiet and upscale in appearance in addition to being next door to the Spa and the clubhouse for the Shenendoah and Kaluhyat courses.  They also have two large domes on site that hold a nice short game area, a driving range with 36 hitting bays and a golf superstore.  Turning Stone Resort is worth the trip for golf lovers.

In summary, it was worth the effort to tackle the New York area traffic in order to play these three courses.  They were entirely different but all great in their own right.  Once again I will say that one of the most important items to have when driving around the country like two crazy’s playing all of these golf courses is a navigation system.  They do not always take you the way you may want to go, but they do get you to your final destination.  We drove 1,656 miles to play three courses, but to us, the experience and memories are worth it.

The buildings at Bethpage were functional but very basic and dated.  Like Torrey Pines which is also a muni, I would think that with the amount of play and the tournaments they host, they could put a little more money into upgrading and updating their facilities.  They have to have the largest parking lot I have ever seen at a golf course. Seven double rows that hold about 40 cars per row equals parking for about 560 cars.  Even with all those spots, we had to drive around the lot like a shopping mall at Christmas waiting for someone to leave in order to secure a spot.  They have five courses, a driving range and a teaching academy and they are all filled with golfers.  Great to see!!

In an interesting sidelight, while driving north through New Jersey on our way to upstate New York, it was raining so hard it was difficult to see and after having enough of the rain we decided to take a break.  As luck would have it, the exit we were going to take had a sign that said we were near the USGA Headquarters and Museum.  It took only minutes to find and we had a very enjoyable hour and a half absorbing the history of our fine game.  The USGA Museum was a great find.