Bethpage State Park - Black Course

“The People’s Country Club,” as it became known after becoming the first public facility to host a U.S. Open, is a beacon for municipal golf in America. Bethpage State Park’s five golf courses see over 300,000 rounds annually and remain affordable and open to anyone. The Black is the most famous of the five and the brawniest, and it has hosted some of golf’s biggest tournaments, including the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Open, 2019 PGA Championship, and the upcoming 2025 Ryder Cup. 

The name Bethpage Black is synonymous with difficulty. The course features treacherous bunkers, thick rough, and an expansive routing that takes players on a six-plus-mile out-and-back journey over hilly and forested Long Island terrain. In its original brief for architects Joseph Burbeck and A.W. Tillinghast, the Long Island Park Commission requested that the architects produce something that “might compare to Pine Valley as a great test.” As crazy as this may sound, Bethpage — with its dramatic topography, sandy soils, and relentless difficulty — does bear some resemblance to the great New Jersey course, which Tillinghast also helped to design. Although the course has lost some of its historical character through the renovations by Rees Jones, Bethpage Black will always be known as one of the best municipal golf courses in America.  

Take Note...

The great debate. The Black course has been widely portrayed as a solo A.W. Tillinghast design for as long as the course has been around. The state park’s website even asserts, “Famed golf course architect A.W. Tillinghast was hired to design and oversee construction of three new golf courses (Black, Red, and Blue) as well as modify the Lenox Hills Course which became the Green Course.” Ahead of the 2002 U.S. Open, Joe Burbeck, son of longtime superintendent Joseph H. Burbeck, spoke out about the role his father had played in the design of the Black Course. This motivated golf historians to do some digging. It turns out that the official history of the Long Island State Parks noted in 1959, “The four golf courses constructed as work-relief projects were designed and constructed under the direction of Joseph H. Burbeck, the Superintendent of the park, with A.W. Tillinghast, internationally known golf architect, as consultant.” It is still debated on how much design input and construction work was completed by either Burbeck or Tillinghast, but it's reasonable to conclude that both men contributed to the Black Course.

Unknown origins. The warning sign near the first tee of the Black Course — which reads, “-WARNING- The Black Course Is An Extremely Difficult Course Which We Recommend Only For Highly Skilled Golfers” — is very famous, but no one seems to know where it came from. Although historian Philip Young has searched far and wide to nail down the sign’s backstory, he hasn’t turned up anything significant. “Not a single person knows,” Young told the media. The world may never know the origins of the most famous sign in golf.

Abandoned. As World War II began to ramp up, maintenance stopped on the Black and Blue courses. Both sat abandoned for three years before being revived in the spring of 1945. What if the Black had never reopened and been lost after only six years of operation? We’re glad that wasn’t the outcome.

{{content-block-course-profile-bethpage-state-park---black-course-001}}