Jason,
You asked what the name of the original Bethpage golf course was.
When Benjamin Yoakum built the Lenox Hills Golf Club, he had in mind a community golf club for the use of those who bought homes in the Lenox Hills area that he was developing. With the way many golf course/housing projects have come into being in the last few decades, he was way ahead of his time.
Yoakum died one month and four days after the stock market crashed in 1929 (natural causes) and his family was left with a great deal of money, land, good stock and a great deal of worthless ones as well. They were also left a golf club - Lenox Hills.
Though a private club, he was the sole owner of the property. The family faced the decision of what to do with it as they both didn't want to operate it as well as desired to see as much funds from it as possible.
New York State, through the Long Island State Parks Commission, founded just a few years earlier to obtain large tracts of land for the newly organizing state park system, had already been talking to Yoakum about purchasing both the golf course and another 100 acres of property adjacent to it that he owned. They also had their eyes on another nearly 900 acres that bordered the Yoakum property. Eventuelly, in 1931, a lease was signed, and purchase was finally made in 1934.
As part of the 1931 lease, the golf course, much to the protests of the members of the club, was opened as a New York State public golf course with the new name of Bethpage Golf Club.
When plans were made to build the new courses, two new holes were created for the course (holes 1 & 18) so that all courses would start and finish from the planned new clubhouse, and the entire course itself was renovated.
As for Timber Point... a number of years ago when I was researching the history of Bethpage State Park, I came across a reference to a "Lot consisting of stack of papers, photographs, ephemera, drawings, blueprints for golf course(s), clubhouse, photographs and other items - Long Island State Parks Commission, 1930-1936..." in the New York State archives.
I traveled from Georgia to Albany excited at the prospect at possibly having found actual blueprints for the Bethpage project as that was the ONLY golf course building project done by the Long Island State Parks Commission during those years.
I was both deeply disappointed and absolutely stunned to find that the "golf course blueprints" were for the original TIMBER POINT GOLF CLUB!
They have notes in both pencil and ink on each page and so must have been the actual set of working drawings for the project!
The layout was amazing and brilliant and I would give anything to have been able to see how it turned out. I am convinced that it was one of the great courses ever built based upon those drawings.
They sit there quietly in an box simply marked "golf course drawings" despite my attempting to alert the curator as to their importance both in person at the time and with a follow-up letter.