Bethpage Black lifts the curtain tomorrow on the 2018 playing season and will feature several renovations made by park staff with the 2019 season — specifically, next May's PGA Championship — in mind.
With the pros headed back this way come next May, some of the Black's more familiar holes have undergone or will soon receive some tweaks, and it won't take long into their rounds for the everyday golfers to notice. Five elm trees were moved from the left side of #1 fairway to the right, building on the wooded presence already in place inside the dogleg. The aim is to make players "think twice before trying to take too much off the corner," says Andrew Wilson, the park's director of agronomy.
Nearby, the final stretch toward the 18th green will take a slightly modified route, as park crews are currently working on bumping out the left-side fairway bunkers and widening the fairway between the two clusters of traps. Gone is the hourglass shape of the final fairway; instead, the short grass will be of equal width from tee to green.
"The most eye-catching project for our golfers is the green extension on #11," Wilson says. "We worked with architects Rees Jones and Greg Muirhead to expand the green's back left." Extending the green and reshaping part of the existing surface creates "four or five new pin locations that we are excited about," according to Wilson. The reworked left greenside bunker will be ground under repair until new sod takes root.
Also around the Black Course:
- Early-winter bunker renovations included #9 green and the fairway traps on #6.
- Bunker renovations around #6 green should be complete by opening day. The walk-off area behind the green has been reworked to provide better drainage.
- Drainage improvements — "equal to foundation work in a house," Wilson describes — are complete on parts of the course and ongoing on others. Some areas have been resodded where drainage and irrigation work was done.
- Part of the pond bank on #8 was sodded and will be planted with native grasses grown on site.
- New sod is in place where this March's series of nor'easters resulted in turf damage.
Elsewhere at Bethpage, golfers will find new low-profile tee fences on the Red Course that will prevent damage from carts. "The fence looks great and is an improvement on the green ropes and stakes we use," Wilson says.
Bunker work is nearly complete on Blue #5 and Red #8. The most significant of the non-Black bunker renovations, however, are on the Green Course, where Muirhead recommended removing the approach bunker on the par-3 11th and the fairway trap on #17. "We felt the approach and fairway bunkers were not a hazard to more skilled players and instead punished others while negatively impacting pace of play," Wilson says. Around the greens though, the right-side trap on #11 is now larger and closer to the surface, while a brand-new trap was installed on #17.
As the season progresses, new forward tees will be added around the non-Black courses, and possibly one or two new back tees.
Wilson credits superintendents Mike Hadley, Kevin Carroll, Vincent Herzog, Erik Feldman, Eric Newell, Hamilton Lopes, Shawn Brownell and their maintenance crew for carrying out the work while battling the winter's early arrival of blizzards, rain and frost that then lingered into spring. Nearly all renovation work is done in-house.
View photos of the offseason and ongoing renovations by visiting Wilson's and Bethpage Golf's Twitter pages at @Greensideup17 and @BethpageGolf.