With the title of this thread, I think it's time for me to share some Very Personal Thoughts about the Black (with all due respect to Mr. Young, who clearly has the first crack at those . . .) It's interesting to see all the responses to this course when it shows up for its close-up. For those of you who don't quite "get" the Black, all I can say is that you should try to see it from the perspective of all of those regular New Yorkers who have been playing it for years, not to mention the crazy passion it takes to sit in your car for 26 hours to have a crack at it if you happen to be in the neighborhood.
I grew up playing munis in Baltimore, and never set foot on any of the grounds of the hallowed courses that get discussed all the time on this forum. The course I played most often, Mount Pleasant, was a muni built in Baltimore in the 30s where Arnold Palmer won (maybe for the first time) on tour back in the 50s. It's a cool course, with some great terrain and great golf holes, but it's a muni.
Anyway, when I lived In New York back in the late 80s and early 90s, I played golf with a couple of friends on a regular basis, usually at New York munis like Dyker Beach, which I actually heard mentioned this weekend because Tiger Woods's father apparently was introduced to the game there. Now THAT's a muni. So a few times a year, Dan and Don and I would get up at 2:30 am and Don would drive into Manhattan from Brooklyn and pick me up, and we'd head out to Bethpage. We usually tried to get out there at about 4 am, because if you arrived any later things would get pretty crazy. In those days there wasn't any kind of a phone reservation system -- they got that going closer to the end of my time in New York, but I'm not sure if you could even make reserved times on the Black, come to think of it . . .
So at 4 am, it was kind of a mass of humanity, although certainly not like it is now. I don't think anybody ever waited overnight back then, but it seems to me that we did run into an occasional character who'd get there around midnight or something. The Red course was harder to get on than the Black at the time, and sometimes we were disappointed because we really wanted to play the Red (it's REALLY a good golf course) but just couldn't get on it. You'd wait until they opened the clubhouse doors, everybody would jumble in, and you'd stand on line for twenty minutes or so and bite your nails hoping a time would still be available, and that we wouldn't wind up playing the Blue (which is still a pretty nice golf course). You got to the window, paid your $21 (at least that seems right in memory, and as I recall, that was a premium for the Black -- it was only $18 or something to play the other courses), and then had some breakfast and hit balls, because after arriving at 4 am, you probably got a time at like 10:50 or something.
Back in 1988, I didn't have a handicap, but probably played to something like an 18. That'd be considered a high-capper on this forum, probably, but I always thought of myself as more of an OK player -- I could hit some great shots, but also hit plenty of tops and squiffs that went in all kind of crazy directions. So when I walked past that sign (and I know there are lots of you who see all the overdone closeups and cazy edits and Tour pros reading the text, and just want to groan . . . But let me tell you, I LOVE that sign) to the first tee, I always had a knot in my stomach, because back then I used to hit a lot of banana balls to the right, and to the right of no.1 is the Green course and that means if it goes over there, your first shot is fricken O.B. Watching the pros have such a hard time hitting that fairway brings a nice smile to my face, because I can definitely relate!
So you hit your shot, you walk down the hill, you play out the first hole, and you walk across the street. And then you start to get a feel for the place. Things are quieter, you listen to the birds. The fairway is surrounded by trees and makes that hole feel pretty intimate. But there was always lots of fescue waiting off the fairway -- I think it was a bit closer back then, although the fairways were wider as I recall. Conditioning was pretty nice, but not groomed like now. And the traps didn't have such carefully built shapes -- they'd been worn down over the years into somewhat less dramatic shapes, and there was beach sand in them, so being in the traps was pretty much sheer terror, if you played like I did.
If you're still with me, thanks for reading. I'll try to wrap it up pretty soon. But I just love the place and it's nice to write about it. You played 2, you played 3 (which wasn't as scary as the new, longer version), and then you turned around and saw 4 looming down the hill and out over the landscape. There is no view in golf that I have seen that quite compares to that view. Not until I played Pacific Dunes and walked up to the number 3 tee and got to see that whole panorama, did I ever see a view on a golf course that was more inspiring. Even in the 80s, before the renovation, it was breathtaking, and I had never seen anything like it during my 15 or so years of playing golf. In fact, in some ways, seeing the carefully designed new bunkering actually bums me out a little, because it can seem a little too nice and carefully crafted. Back then the Glacier bunker was more of a big wide open wall of sand with all kinds of gnarly crap all over the place and it was really grand and terrifying.
Anyway -- that was the best par 5 hole I ever saw, and it still is. A magnificent hole. So is 5. So is 6. So is 7. And it pretty much just keeps going like that for most of the rest of the way. The place just has a grandeur and scale that simply cannot be captured on television. The look of 17 from the tee is absolutely breathtaking, with all of the big bunkering jutting out here and there, pretty much hiding the putting surface and looking really intimidating. On TV this weekend, the hole looked cool, but you just didn't really get it. Go stand on that tee and you'll see what I mean. Up the hill on 15 was just a terror. The flatter terrain around 10, 11 and 12 is cool because it has its own particular feel, and the wide vistas there are a big change from what you've seen through the first 9. The scale makes some of the tee shots really ambiguous, because there's so much room you can't figure out what to aim at. In all, the Black is a true journey.
And even though I play Rustic Canyon now, and prefer a minimalist, llnks kind of style, Bethpage Black remains one of my two favorite courses, even though I haven't seen it in person in almost 20 years. It simply has a feel and a poetic grandeur that is like no other golf course I've seen. And I think the fact that perhaps a place like Pine Valley may be something of a fair comparison (if generally considered the better course), what makes Bethpage so special to so many people, is that we've been there, and we've played it a bunch of times, and we know what that shot from under a tree on the right side of number 5 feels like. We've been behind that tree. And we probably will never be behind any tree at Pine Valley, because not many people ever get to see it, much less play it. We can all play Bethpage Black.
Dan and Don and I used to walk around there on Sunday afternoons in 1989 hitting shots, some good and some bad. And we always used to look at each other somewhere around 6 or 7 and say, "you know -- they really should play a US Open on this course." Now they do. That's why we love it.
Thanks for the time, fellows. Talk to you soon.
R