After fantasizing about getting reamed by this course for years, I finally put the plan into action and aimed to make it happen. In this post i'll outline the scenario, tips and other bits of information that I found in my journey to the ultimate humbling I've taken by a course.
Coming from the UK, my GF and I planned an east coast tour and my only pre-requisite was that I got to play Bethpage. I managed to sneak in two other courses in Shining Rock, Massachusetts and Campbells Scottish Highlands, Massachusetts. Shining Rock was exceptional for the price, great condition and felt almost like a dollar store version of Paynes Valley, essentially carved into the rocks with tight fairways and stupid fast greens. Campbells was like being back home, with fast greens and a very linksy layout but not quite the same level as Shining Rock.
Getting a Bethpage tee time is notoriously hard, especially in the summer and being a non-resident. For reference, and anyone that doesn't know, NY residents can book 7 days in advance for the Black course and non-NY residents can book 5 days in advance. All of this is pretty redundant as tee time bots snipe up any tee times within the first second so you never see them anyway. As a non-resident, if you want to play (and finish) either Black or Red you have five options to realistically play Black or Red.
- Know a NY resident who can get a time and go with them.
- Deal via a broker who snipes tee times through their own bots, and resells them (this has been getting cracked down on, but there's ways around this. I did aim for this originally but it didn't pan out in the end)
- Snipe your own tee time with some of the online tools that check for tee times every 5 minutes, or paid to check every minute (this was how I ended up getting mine)
- Spam refresh the tee time page in the 5 days before you want to play (this is pretty unrealistic for Red and Black as bots are faster than you, but people need to give 12 hours notice of cancellation or they get charged so if you spam refresh all day and especially the 12 hours before you want to play you may get one if you're lightning quick.)
- Camp overnight to get a walk on. When we left at 6pm on Friday there were already people camping out in their lawchairs in the car park for the next morning.
I had basically resigned to not getting a tee time on Thursday, so we pushed ahead with our Peter Luger reservation and ate like kings (Note: steak for 4 means steak for 6). I waddled back to the hotel and quickly passed out on top of my pile of High Noons and Peter Luger golden coins until I was rudely awaked by the beeping of my phone at about 12:30am noting that my tee time sniper had somehow gotten me a 2 ball spot at 12:20pm that day. I thought I was hallucinating, but it was real and I quickly started getting my affairs in order. My playing partner was in another hotel, also dead to the wind and it wasn't until 7am when I started spam calling to wake him up and tell him this wasn't a drill.
In order to get to Bethpage from Manhattan your best bet is to take the LIRR from Grand Central or, in my case, Woodside if you're in Brooklyn. It takes just over an hour but do not get off at Bethpage, get off at Farmingdale and get a 5 minute cab to the park. When I stepped onto the platform at Woodside, a random person asked me where I was playing and I loudly said Bethpage Black. He gave out an 'oof' and that started the conversation about how he was a caddy at BPB in prior years, and how he didn't wish to be me that day. It was going to be hot (and it was, about 26C), and how if you want all the beauty of Black but not the deep, physical pain that goes along with it then you should play Red. The red course allows you buggies, and basically follows the Black course route for large portions. He was drinking a twisted tea at 7:45 in the morning and definitely had seen the sun for most of his life, so I was inclined to believe his stories. Coming from the UK, we walk about 90% of the year so I wasn't too worried with the walk that people kept telling me was 'hell-adjacent'.
My first mistake came about 10 minutes into the train ride when I realised I had forgotten my golf shoes in the hotel. No bother, I fully went into this day expecting to push the boat out and spend like I was a Rockefeller so i'd just buy shoes at the course. This is something people need to know, the pro shop at Bethpage is arguably twice as expensive as you're expecting it to be. I bought shoes, they were $200, the BPB Ryder cup quarter zip was $180, ball markers $5, divot tool ball marker $25, BPB Ryder cup hat $60 (I think). Every bit of the experience was an absolute falcon punch to my wallet. The tee times, non weekend, were $145 each, which is obviously great value for such an amazing course. My playing partner needed rented clubs and that was $80 which definitely felt too high, and the locker rental was a fiver with a $20 deposit. All together, after paying for our tee times, rental and all the gear I had spent just shy of $1000 before 10am.
I walked through the hallowed halls of the clubhouse and into the locker room, met up with my playing partner and stored the precious cargo. Went down to the bar and got a pretty good breakfast burrito, and then hit the range. The range is an absolute log jam, there's only 1 and it has about 20 spots. People queue up to the spots so if you get more than a small bucket you'll aggrivate the people behind you waiting. You also "can't" hit driver as the range is too small. This was the only real negative of the place, I expected them to have a top end range but it's actually quite shit. There's 3 or 4 putting greens, but none of them have holes so it's all just putting to tees you put in the ground as markers. No big deal here, and you have two of them just before the Black tees. I couldn't find any bunker or chipping practice areas, but maybe I missed them. The grounds themselves are amazing, it is a public space so you get people walking dogs around the club house and there's always a big group watching people tee off Black. Finally 12:10 rolled around and it was our turn to experience the Black course. We met our playing partners for the day, who were great and right on our level skill wise and personality wise, they really made the day a lot better which was ideal. They filled us with transfusions at the halfway hut and were just overall great dudes.
I had been absolutely bricking it thinking about this tee shot for the past X years, and like most people on this sub I hit it long but I do not hit it straight. I've been fighting a terrible slice, or hook, or top for a long time with my driver and it didnt help that my driver shaft broke on the plane ride over, and while I did have a spare one it was a higher stiffness that I had just gotten regripped about 2 days prior. Nonetheless I stepped up to the most terrifying tee shot in golf and absolute corked one 285 yards down the absolute middle of the fairway. That was it for me, I could play the rest of the day like absolute shit and go home happy knowing I had just commited Pro-V1 murder on the first tee of Bethpage Black.
Things only went downhill for my game from there, heed my warning and the warnings of everyone else that's played here: the rough is so ridiculously thick you can't compress anything, nor can you get any wedge bounce out of it. If i were to do it all over again I would absolutely just sack up and take my medicine if I was in the rough. Unless you're a scratch golfer or built like a brick shithouse, you're not getting the ball to fly out of the rough the way you want it to. I proceeded to hit one more good tee shot for the rest of the day, but had some great putts and wedges to compensate. The greens were lightning fast, I think the pro shop said they were rolling a 13 on the day. Every single inch of this course was immaculate, from the fairways that were carpets to the greens which were like putting on a dining room table. Every hole was a painting and every walk down the fairways a movie. There's a halfway hut on 6 and it wraps back around on 12. I fully expected to lose a shitload of balls, so I tactically stopped at a Costco when we arrived and bought a 24 pack of Kirklands. I tee'd off 1 with a Pro-V1 and switched after that when i proceeded to lose ball after ball to the high rough and tight layouts of the course. The bunkers were absolute behemoths, and incredibly daunting. Bunkers and putting are my only two strong suits and I had trouble out of some of them for sure.
The course plays 7400 yards from the tips, but 6600 from the whites. The walk is intense, and my overpacking definitely made things worse. Shed all the weight you can or get a pull cart if you're good enough to keep it straight because by the 3rd hold I was absolute drenched in sweat from the combination of heat and incline. You're constantly walking uphill somehow, and if you're shit at golf like I am then you're in for a double-hard walk that never seems to end. My back hurt for a good two days after playing, and that's coming from someone who backpack carries almost every time. The pace of play is also very slow, and it's not just because of the amount of people playing. We actually never waiting on the tees alonside anyone else, it's just a stupid long course and a very tough walk. The round took 5.5 hours and I could easily see it taking 6 to 6.5 on weekends.
All of the cost, pain and terrible shots didn't effect me at all though as I stood over the 18th tee looking up at the clubhouse as the sun was just starting to lower, and as my ball sailed 150 yards right of the hole over to first fairway of the Red course I could only smile thinking back at this bucket list of a day.
Great weather, great company, great course, terrible score and financial ruin. What more could a guy ask for?
17th par 3 – home of the greatest chip i've ever hit
by radioslave
5 Comments
This is very informative. Also happy to read!
Congrats!!! Great memories for sure.
they desperately need to up their merch game. Its so rough.
Everything you said here is 100% accurate. Hope you enjoyed it!
>This is something people need to know, the pro shop at Bethpage is arguably twice as expensive as you’re expecting it to be. I bought shoes, they were $200, the BPB Ryder cup quarter zip was $180, ball markers $5, divot tool ball marker $25, BPB Ryder cup hat $60 (I think).
lol that’s basically what I would expect it to be. It’s not all that crazy from a price point for all those items. I’d say it’s pretty normal for any nice/high-end course.