It was a long and cold spring in New York, but neither the length nor the cooling could stall the official beginning of one of the most expected wine in Bethpage’s latest history.
Golfists arrived early and often, as they always do here: living in place after a spot on white asphalt outside the Bethpage State Park club. The tears were full of the time when the night arrived on the first day of the season, filling with players from the world to dream of the elusive time in their chairs. The crowds remained in this way through the summer heat, surprising park officials who did not understand anything – not even the benefit of a future Ryder cup – cannot increase even higher demand.
Tradition of Bethpage’s sleep remains one of the greatest heirs of the course, a vibrant incarnation of egalitarian spirit The Long Island municipal golf complex was founded. Each every day, the park reserves a certain number of time for those who spend the night sleeping in their cars, dividing beer and food and banter and a dream. In the evening, players get tickets that cement their place in line for when dawn arrives. The next morning, they have moved from the parking lot to the park office and are given a small time with an affordable rate-about $ 80 for New Yorkers, and about double that for owners outside.
It all brings a general sense of readiness in most nights in the lot, and for a good reason. For those who have a golf addiction as serious enough to sleep on their underwear, a time of Bethpage is a hit of the rank of weapons. The state could charge them 10 times the price and they would still pay them with pleasure. On the contrary, the greens fee was a shopping … as long as you have no factor in the cost of lost sleep.
This was appropriate. Bethpage State Park exists thanks to only the so -called “Grand Bargain”: the new agreement. In the 1930s, the park was one of New York’s crowning achievements of The Administration of Progress worksA program of the Rosevelt depression era that sought to establish the record number of US unemployed to work schools in building schools, government buildings and parks that would benefit from public goods.
When Robert Moses, New York’s legend within man, found the plot of the land to become Bethpage, he was bold with the opinion of the golf. He hired the leading architect of the Golf Course of the Day, a loud 20th of America, AW Tilinghast, for the large fee of $ 10 a day. Vision? Create the course that Moses called the “popular country club”.
Tillinghast, working with the local golf legend (and the course guardian) Joseph BurbeckIt produced the course now called Bethpage Black, a mythical municipal golf course of Draconian dimensions and the evaluation of the big sample.
For most of those who sleep in the parking lot, the reward is a round in The Black, a 7,400-Obligation, PAR-72 inserting that brings a lot of vertical walks and the special feeling of a shin stroke. However, indeed, reward is an opportunity to share the same real estate as the US Open game legends in 2002 or 2009, PGA Championship in 2019 or Ryder Cup in 2025.
The black course has suffered some renovations over the years, most of which it was completed by the so -called “Open Doctor”, Rees Jones, before ’02 US Open. Work before 2025 has been more modest: a new set of street bunkers in the 13th hole is one of some new sports traps, while the fair roads are wider than most locals can remember, with a new addition – a first cut – surviving in summer.
Indeed, the biggest update has nothing to do with the Golf Course: it is the extraordinary, temporary tent city that now connects the Golf Course from the first TeE to 18. The renovations are incomplete – the biggest construction, the one that will actually surround the first Tee box, is located after the public closure of the course later – but you can understand this summer.
I have always been hit by Bethpage size. When I first played the course in 2020, I imagined it as a kind of mythical beast. In many ways, I still do. But now, with the hospitality and building of Grandstand in full activity, it is much larger and more scary than I can ever remember.
The result will be one of the biggest and biggest golf events when the United States team and their counterparts in Europe reach the city – a spectacle that suits one of the biggest and most global events in the sport.
However, until then, Hubbub has generated something much simpler for those who fill the parking lots and the streets of the fair every night: excitement, the type that never shrinks in Bethpage, but which has amplified at new heights in 2025.
You can feel it in the air as the sunset turns into the dark every evening in the big asphalt parking at Bethpage State Park – and again every morning as the darkness turns to dawn. Then, at least six days a week, a new rookies culture arrives at Bethpage Black.
It is a brilliant, beautiful, glorious bargain. And somehow, it’s just improving.
James Colan is a news editor of news and features in Golf, writing stories on the website and magazine. He manages the hot germ, golf media vertical and uses his experience on camera across brand platforms. Before entering Golf, James graduated from Siracuse University, during which time he was a caddy scholarship receiver (and Astuta Looper) in Long Island, where he is. He can be reached on James.colgan@golf.com.
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