A Brief History of Bethpage Black

By now, every golf fan knows of the difficulty of Bethpage Black and of its iconic warning sign.

Less well known is that The Black is just one of five courses at New York’s Bethpage State Park:

The Black is one of five courses at New York’s Bethpage State Park. The others are the Red, Blue, Green and Yellow.

Three of the five were Depression-era works projects.

The story of Bethpage State Park and their courses begins in 1912 when Benjamin Franklin Yoakum (is there a more 19th century name?), a railroad executive, acquired some 1,368 acres in what is now Old Bethpage, New York. Yoakum hired Devereux Emmet to design an 18-hole golf course on the property, which opened in 1923 as the Lenox Hills Country Club.

Lenox Hills would become Bethpage’s Green Course.

Yoakum died in 1929 and his heirs offered to sell the land as a park for $1.1 million. A lawsuit by the Lenox Hills Country Club, which had leased the golf course from the Yoakums delayed the purchase. It ultimately was sold to the Bethpage Park Authority for $100,000 in cash and $900,000 in Park authoity bonds.

The key figure in the story at this point is Robert Moses, a New York urban planner who was simultaneously Chair of the New York State Council of Parks (1924 – 1963), Commissioner of the NYC Dept of Parks and Recreation (1934 – 1960), President of the Long Island State Park Commission (1924 – 1963), Chair of the Emergency Public Works Commission (1933 – 1934) and on a dozen other planning commissions and public works authorities. Among other projects, Moses created the Long Island parkways, the Triborough Bridge, the Brooklyn-Queens and Staten Island expressways and dozens of other parks, public pools and facilities. He even had a hand in the building of the UN Building, Shea Stadium and Lincoln Center.

As one of the most powerful men in New York, Moses proposed the establishment of the Bethpage Park Authority in 1933, which acquired the land and financed improvements through bonds. In addition to golf courses, the project funded a clubhouse, polo field, picnic areas, horseback riding facilities, and trails for a variety of activities.

Of great importance during the Depression was that the Work Relief Project employed 1,800.

(If you’re in Michigan, it is worth noting that — among others — The Cascades in Jackson is a Depression era public works project designed by Tom Bendelow.)

All of this, however, likely is stuff only a political science nerd like me would enjoy reading about.

The park was named “Bethpage” — at Moses’ urging — after a large tract of land originally bought in 1695 by Thomas Powell from Native American tribes.

Construction on the courses began soon after a deal was struck — and before the land actually changed hands. Moses just forged ahead.

A.W. Tillinghast was hired to do the course design at the rate of $50 a day for a maximum of 15 days. Tillinghast had been active as a golf architect since the 1890s and had created many famous courses, such as Aronimink (1915), Baltusrol (1922), Winged Food (1923) and Sleepy Hollow (1928). By the mid-1930s, however, his career was largely behind him. At the time, he was reportedly doing poorly financially and suffering from alcoholism.

Still, having Tillinghast’s name attached to the project would lend it weight.

Enter Joseph Burbeck. Burbeck had a degree in landscape architecture, and had worked on the construction of golf courses in the midwest. Moses’ park commission had hired him in 1919 to design and build a short course at Jones Beach State Park on Long Island.

When Moses engineered the purchase of the Bethpage property, Burbeck and his family moved into the Lenox Hills Clubhouse to manage the course.

Burbeck would ultimately oversee the day-to-day work on the Blue, Red and Black.

Although Tillinghast is popularly credited with the design of the Blue, Red and Black, there is considerable evidence that he acted primarily as a consultant on the project. Park Superintendent Joseph H. Burbeck now is widely credited with the course development. He was involved on a daily basis in shaping what was a public works project of the Depression. Some suggest that the routings were finished and construction underway before Tillinghast visited.

Still, the debate continues. Team Tillinghast notes that the Black, in particular, reflect Tillinghast’s style in strategic design, bunker and fairway styles. Team Burbeck notes that Tilinghast was on site for perhaps fifteen days and that a contemporary article names him as the architect.

I find it interesting that no mention of Tillinghast shows up in The New York Post or Age newspaper reports from 1929 to 1939. If he was hired to lend his famous name, it doesn’t appear to have worked.

To be fair, the only mention of a Joseph H. Burbeck is that a person of that name donated one dollar to the “Roosevelt Pool Fund.”

There’s a lot of controversy here.

An article from March 31, 1935 in the New York Daily News notes:

The Bethpage State golf course at Farmingdale, Nassau, is now open for the 1935 season, the Long Island State Park Commission announced yesterday. Fairways and greens are in prime condition after the Winter’s rest.

Work on two additional golf courses to be opened this Summer, is being pushed and both are expected to open to the public within a week or two. A third new course will be opened in 1936.

A new clubhouse is being built at the nearest point to all four courses and the first and eighteenth holes of each course will be near this building. The house is of colonial design, giving a view of all four courses.

The club will have lounge, dining room grill and ample locker space and showers.

Another mention of players at “Bethpage Golf” is from the New York Daily News on May 10, 1935.

That article says:

Cox, Brosch Win Bethpage Golf

Duffers who try the new Bethpage Park golf course, Farmingdale, L.Il, which was formall dedicated yesterday, will soon discvoer that the layout can absorb lots of punishment in defense of Old Man Par. Four crack professionals tried the beautiful setup in dedication day exercises and they found the going plenty tough.

Wally Cox, hard hitting Brooklyn pro, turned in a 73 for a low. he was paired with Al Brosh, home pro, against Jimmy Hines and Charley Lacey. Cox and his partner won by one hole. All players agreed that the layout is a splendid test of golf.

A September 12, 1937 article in the Daily News says

The public links championshiop will be decided this afternoon at the Bethpage Golf Club, Farmingdale. The tournament, open to members of the Met Golf Association, started Friday. The semi-final round of 18 holes match play will be held in the morning and the finals for the championship will start at 1:00 pm.

The paper did not follow up with the name of a winner.

Bethpage Yellow was added in 1958 in response to the increasing popularity of the four existing courses at Bethpage. Its architect, Alfred Tull had at various points worked with A.W. Tillinghast and the designer of Lenox Hills Country Club (Bethpage Green), Devereux Emmett.

All was not smooth sailing from that point, however. Like many aging public facilities (of all stripes), Bethpage’s golf course fell into a state of disrepair. Those who played at the time reported damaged and rock strewn bunkers, thin fairways and a general sense of malaise.

We had a lot of maiaise in those days. President Carter said the US suffered from “a malaise.” The economy stunk, and public budgets were thin.

Reports are that you could just walk on to Bethpage Black in those days because few wanted to play it.

Things began to turn around for Bethpage Black in 1995 when David Fay, the USGA executive director (1989 – 2010) got the notion of making Bethpage Black the first muni to host a US Open (Pebble Beach, nominally a “public course” hosted the 1971 US Open; Pinehurst, also nominally “public” hosted in 1999).

A contract to host the US Open was signed with the USGA in 1997. According to the USGA, the organization invested $3 million in restoring the course. A New York Parks press release from the time says the USGA spent $2.7 million. John Feinstein in Golf Digest wrote that it was $5 million.

In any case, Rees Jones — the Open Doctor — was engaged to do the design work.

Bethpage Black closed to the pulic in July 1997, and reopened June 10, 1998.

The first US Open at a muni was held at Bethpage in 2002.

Tiger Woods — who else? — won.

Since 2002, Bethpage Black has hosted a pair of US Opens, a PGA Championship and has several more scheduled in the future.

In addition, Bethpage Black has hosted every New York State Open since 1996 (the event sounds really old, but only dates to 1978). it also is one of 18 clubs to have hosted the Metropolitan Golf Associations Open, Amateur and Ike Stoke Play Championship.