I spent much of this past weekend watching the PGA Championship on TV, one of professional golf’s ‘major’ tournaments along with the Masters, U.S. Open and the Open Championship (also known as the British Open). The tournament was held at the Black Course at Bethpage State Park on Long Island, New York. For the uninitiated, Bethpage Black is considered one of the most difficult golf courses in the world, yep, the whole freakin’ world. But what makes Bethpage Black really cool is that unlike 90% of the courses that the pros play, it is open to the public. Any schmo with $130 and five hours to kill can play the same course that Brooks Koepka just won the PGA Championship on, and the same course that thoroughly embarrassed most of the other 155 players in the field. Bethpage Black is also one of the only golf courses in the world with a sign like this on the way to the first tee.
Sounds like a lot of fun, huh? Well, back in 2006 that’s exactly what I thought. I was playing a ton of golf at the time and my handicap was probably the lowest it’s ever been, around 7. The U.S. Open had been played at the Black Course in 2002 and it became instantly famous in the golf world due to the well deserved hype that it received because of it’s difficulty, and in the tournament it did not disappoint. Tiger Woods won with 3 under par and no other golfer in the field broke par, which is pretty much unheard of. So yeah, in the summer of 2006 I just happened to be planning a trip to the east coast with my lovely girlfriend at the time who the following year became my wife (and still is, yeah it was Robin), and it seemed like my best chance to play the Black Course. So I planned our trip to spend a day in New York City where I would go play golf in Hell, and Robin would shop and sight-see in Manhattan (we had both been to NYC several times). Then the following day we would go on our merry way to Maine, Boston and Cape Cod.
The morning after we flew to New York I woke up bright and early and took a cab to an Avis rental car place near Central Park, rented a car and headed for Farmingdale on Long Island. It was a pretty uneventful drive and I arrived at about 8:00am. In general, if you are golfing as a ‘single,’ it’s usually pretty easy to get out to play. There’s almost always a twosome or a threesome that the pro shop can stick you with. Well, ‘in general’ doesn’t apply to Bethpage Black, I hung around and waited for about 3 hours to get out on the Black Course and no freakin’ dice. Nothing but foursome after foursome after foursome. Crazy!
As luck would have it there are five 18 hole courses at Bethpage State Park and I had to give up on playing the Black Course but the pro shop was able to get me out on the second best course of the bunch, which is the Red Course. The Red Course was designed by the same guy who designed the Black Course but is about 400 yards shorter, so a mere 7,014 yards (at sea level), and according to the guys I played with has more forgiving rough. The Red Course turned out to be just about as much golf course as I wanted, nine par fours over 400 yards, gigantic sand traps and they cut the thing out of an old growth forest. But I survived, shot a decent score of 85, and then hopped in my car and drove back to Manhattan where I arrived, you guessed it, about three hours later than I had told Robin that I would.
Robin wasn’t buying my story and it wasn’t the most pleasant evening we’ve ever spent together but we got through it. The next morning we drove to Portland, Maine and eventually made our way to Boston and finished our journey on Cape Cod. It was quite the trip, four cities in seven days, and at some point I’d love to do it all over again. I’m not a 7 handicap anymore (about 12 these days), so next time I’ll probably just head straight to the Red Course and I’ll bring my lovely wife with me to ride shotgun.
This is the back of the Red Course scorecard, literally more information on here than any scorecard I’ve ever seen, basically a tutorial on how one is meant to play golf in public with other humans.
