Right Place, Right Time

With its WPA roots and creative tweaks, Bethpage Black is a stage replete with possibility

The Black opens with a downhill dogleg-right par 4 (tee is in right foreground) and closes with a well-bunkered uphill par 4 (green is in left foreground).

By Ron Whitten

Photos by Stephen Szurlej

June 15, 2009

When America needs its spirit renewed, it turns to Bethpage.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s, it was Bethpage that put thousands back to work reconstructing a portion of one golf course and adding three more 18s, not to create a private playground for the corporate elite, but to form "the people's country club," a fanfare for the common man that has now sounded for more than 70 years.

While the smoke and sorrow of Sept. 11, 2001 still lingered above New York City and the entire nation, it was the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black that got people cheering once again—and jeering, too, for that's part of the price championship golfers must pay when they invade the people's turf.

Now, in the midst of the worst economic plight since the breadlines and Hoovervilles of the 1930s, the Open returns to Bethpage Black, to provide four days of escapist entertainment of the highest order, and to remind us that good things can emerge from bad times, that governments sometimes do have brilliant ideas and that the game of golf will remain strong as long as it never forgets its grass roots.

Bethpage was conceived by Robert Moses, the most powerful unelected public official of the 20th century, but owes its implementation to Joseph H. Burbeck. As manager of the Bethpage Corporation in 1934, Burbeck supervised the design and construction of the complex, at the start drawing upon the talents of design consultant A.W. Tillinghast, the legendary architect who candidly credited Burbeck with the ambition of making the Black Course as great and severe a test as Pine Valley.

Sadly, Tillinghast never viewed the finished product. Burbeck, however, became the superintendent of Bethpage State Park in 1937 and presided over the place until his retirement in 1964.

The spirit of Bethpage waned after that, along with its conditioning, for 30 years, until USGA executive director David Fay decided the U.S. Open should sometimes go to courses that are accessible and affordable to all. Thus began the rediscovery of Bethpage Black and its subsequent reinvigoration.

Architect Rees Jones and his senior design associate Greg Muirhead handled the resurrection of the Black Course prior to the '02 Open, transforming a dandelion patch into a sparkling jewel on a bargain-basement budget.

Jones and Muirhead returned last year to lengthen and strengthen the course even more, again using limited financial resources. The Black now measures 7,426 yards, par 70, up from 7,214 yards in the 2002 Open. Its new tees will cause headaches as well as backaches.

A new one on the fifth, stretching the par 4 to 478 yards, now brings a diagonal carry bunker on the right very much into play. The farther left players aim to avoid it, the more likely their approach shot to the elevated fifth green will be hampered or blocked by overhanging trees on the left.

The dogleg-right seventh, normally a par 5, was played as a 489-yard par 4 during the '02 Open. A new tee now makes it a 525-yard par 4, but Jones widened the fairway along the left after seeing several players drive it through the dogleg in 2002.

The par-4 ninth goes from 418 yards to 460 yards, and Jones has added a new carry bunker on the inside corner of this dogleg left. It takes a 296-yard drive to clear the bunker, but there is fairway mowed on the bunker's far slope to reward those who gamble and clear it.