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Open for business, 2002
The 2002 U.S. Open is going to rank way up there on the scale of coolness. The Black Course at Bethpage State Park on Long Island is a classic old A.W. Tillinghast design that Rees Jones, the Open doctor, has modernized and lengthened without messing up the look. You can play the Black Course for $31 weekdays, $39 weekends, if you can finagle a tee time (either by phone or by getting in line before dawn). I played there last week with Jones and two other New York area golf writers and was surprised by how good the course is and by what great shape it's in. I'd rank the Black among America's top 20 courses. The course has come a long way since Jones joined David Fay and some other USGA types in 1995 for a round on the Black and volunteered his services, for free, to fix up the course. "It needed a lot of work condition-wise and the bunkers were very far away from the putting surfaces, they wouldn't have come into play for the better players," Jones told me. "Bunkers had footprints that were a foot deep. Tom Meeks made me play it as it lies and I broke 90, which was incredible. We knew it was a great course, we just had to bring it back."
A $2.7 million grant from the USGA enabled the State of New York to turn the Black back into Black Beauty. Craig Currier, a former assistant superintendent at Garden City Golf Club and Piping Rock who also worked at Augusta National in the winters, took over and helped turn around the insufficient care that all five Bethpage courses had been getting. "The whole place needed an overhaul," Currier said. "There was no crew here, really. We probably had only five guys per course. The first weekend I started here, I had one guy working on the Black Course on a Saturday. Most of the guys were civil service workers and, in fairness, didn't have any formal training in turf. What they knew was what they were taught here, which wasn't always necessarily the right thing. I hired guys who had turf experience. We've got 16 guys now with four-year degrees from turf schools and 13 turf students. Last year we laid seven acres of sod, redid at least two-thirds of the tees on the Red Course and probably a third of the bunkers on the Red, Yellow and Blue. We rebuilt the worst holes that were absolutely atrocious. It was definitely overwhelming at first but now there aren't many eyesores left to fix. It was just a case of needing more labor, especially when you're hosting 300,000 rounds a year on five courses." Jones was the right man for this job. Among his other renovation projects were Duke University's East Lake course, Quaker Ridge for the Walker Cup, Ridgewood for the PGA Seniors, Congressional, The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. for the Ryder Cup and Atlanta Athletic Club for August's PGA Championship. Some of his original designs are outstanding, too, such as Haig Point (in South Carolina) and Atlantic Golf Club (on Long Island). He is uniquely qualified to be the Open Doctor. "Growing up as the son of Robert Trent Jones and playing all the great courses, I got to understand the nuances of the masters," Jones said. "It's very important to me to enhance these great facilities that are sacred turf in golf and upgrade them to the modern championship standards. It's important to maintain the original integrity of the designs. When I was in Brookline, I had someone ask me, 'What did you do? I don't see anything that looks different?' I said thank you very much -- to me, that was a compliment. I've played a lot of golf on Tillinghast courses in the northeast. He's sort of been my idol. Bethpage was his Pine Valley and was for many, many years the best course in America. This is Tillinghast's ultimate golf course." The Black is a brute on a sprawling landscape of rolling hills. The third hole is a Redan-like par-3. Jones took out the trees growing on the left side and built new tees, lengthening it from a 150-ish-yard hole to a nervy 211 yards. The view from the third tee is one of the best in non-seaside golf. You can look down to the fourth tee, a par-5 that climbs a long hill that is separated by layers of huge bunkers, like partitions. I think it's the best-looking hole on the course, but it's certainly not the toughest. Playing from the white tees (par 71, 74.2 rating), I hit driver, 3-iron into the front bunker, blasted out and two-putted for par. The Open course will feature four par-4s of 480 yards or more and three par-3s over 200 yards. The stretch of 10, 11 and 12, three long par-4s with troublesome fairway bunkers and thick fescue lurking to snag an errant tee shot, could be a pivotal part of the Open. The 17th is an interesting par-3, 213 yards from the back (195 from the whites) to a shallow, stretched-out green. Here's how big the green is: The pin was back left when we played and I blocked my 4-iron way right. My birdie attempt was from 36 paces --108 feet. I miraculously rolled it to gimmie range. Jones hit a sweet 3-wood shot right over the pin and drained a 15-foot downhill putt for birdie, easily the highlight of his round. Jones toughed up the 18th considerably, building a new tee to lengthen it to 420 yards, which still isn't very long by tour pro standards. However, he expanded the wild fairway bunkers considerably so they pinch in tightly at the landing area. He also cut the size of the green in half and added another greenside bunker. The green already had long, flowing bunkers in front and Jones' revisions have turned the 18th into the Black's photogenic signature hole. "We added 300 or 400 yards overall and it needed it," Jones said. "Now it's like we had a crystal ball, they're all hitting it so much farther. One thing I like about the Opens is that I know the setup is going to be demanding. Most PGA Tour events, they don't tuck the pins, they don't use the slopes or the gouges of the greens. The USGA does. You put in all the work knowing it's going to be the ultimate test. I think the Black will be a very well-received venue for the Open. The Open makes the world focus on one spot for a week. Once Bethpage Black is discovered, people from all over the world are going to want to come play it." For $31 to play a U.S. Open course, well, it's the biggest steal in golf. Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle is a regular contributor to
the magazine's Golf Plus edition. Click here
to send him a question or comment.
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