A Flat Finish

For all of Bethpage Black's strengths, the final hole isn't one of them. So much so that the USGA considered using the Red Course for a finishing hole.

The USGA considered playing from the Black Course's 18th (from the tee) to the Red's first fairway (near right) and then to the Red's 18th green (upper right Shadow).

By Ron Whitten
Photos By Stephen Szurlej June 2009

A golf course, particularly one hosting a U.S. Open, ought to build to a climax. It can be gentle at the start, should increase the pace and the pulse as it goes, mix in a couple of interludes and finish with a crescendo.

Bethpage Black, site of the 109th U.S. Open June 18-21, almost achieves those movements but fails to sustain a flourish in its final stanza. Certainly the 15th and 16th holes, side-by-side par 4s running 459 yards up a hill and 490 yards back down it, crash like giant cymbals, and the volume and pressure can be relentless on the 207-yard 17th, where bleachers and a vast hillside for spectators transform it into a rocking, raucous Yankee Stadium.

The Original Plan:
The 18th hole at Bethpage Black was a challenge to architects from the beginning. Original plans included a fairway water hazard -- never built -- on the Black's 18th, then only 373 yards. The USGA considered revamping the redesigned 411-yard 18th for the 2009 Open -- even contemplating playing from the Black's 18th tee to the Red's first fairway, then to the Red's 18th green for a par 4 of at least 500 yards.

But then there's the 18th, a cacophonous finale, discordant in its demands, dissonant in its drama. It's 411 yards off an elevated tee to an elevated green, but all downhill in terms of excitement; a long iron off the tee to a flat fairway, a middle iron or less from there into a flat green. It's adagio where brio is desired.

The 18th has always been Bethpage Black's black mark, originally a short, straight par 4 with a wide fairway flanked by oddly disjointed bunkers and a huge, mostly wide-open green. Mike Davis, now the USGA's senior director of rules and competitions, remembers walking the site in 1997, wondering if there was any way to swap the Black's 18th with that of Bethpage's adjacent Red Course, a 463-yard par 4 with a heavily bunkered green nestled in a tree-dotted hollow. But the 300-yard walk from the Black's 17th green to the Red's 18th tee was just too long, and a switch would have other ramifications.

Last fall, Davis, still enamored with the amphitheater setting of the Red Course's 18th green, mulled the possibility of gerrymandering a finishing hole that would have competitors play from the Black's 18th tee to the first fairway of the Red Course and from there into the Red's 18th green. It would have created a closing par 4 of at least 500 yards, with natural gallery positions around three sides of the green.

There's a precedent: For the 1963 and 1988 U.S. Opens at The Country Club near Boston, the USGA played over one green to another on the far side of a pond to make the par-4 11th a decent challenge. But Davis recognized that re-routing Bethpage's 18th posed the same dilemma he faced in 1997 when he considered switching the finishing hole.