BELLPORT, N.Y. — This is the high season for Ryder Cup insights and those qualified to provide them. Paul McGinley, for instance, the Golf Channel commentator. He was the captain of the 2014 European Ryder Cup team. Or Jim “Bones” Mackay, from NBC Sports, who caddied in a dozen Ryder Cups. Then there is Rees Jones, the golf-course architect, who gave Bethpage Black the makeover it needed to make it a primetime player again.
Based on his considerable experience at Bethpage, among other and Ryder Cup courses, Jones was coaxed into making a bold prediction about the outcome of this 45th Ryder Cup on Thursday afternoon.
“I think it’ll be close, but I think the Americans will win,” Jones said.
“Are you a betting man?” a friend asked.
“I used to be,” Jones said.
“What happened?”
“I was playing a lot with this bookie, and I thought I knew something about college basketball. Found out, I didn’t.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, 1975.”
When UCLA ruled college basketball, Jack Nicklaus was at the height of his powers and the Reds beat the Red Sox in an epic seven-game World Series.
Jones loves sports. He doesn’t love how the modern sports fan is bombarded with messages to bet and gamble and wager. But he’s so sure about his Ryder Cup prediction he’s willing to get sucked back into the action.
“What’s the most you’d be willing to lose on this Ryder Cup,” he was asked.
“Hmmm,” Jones said, considering. He’s a methodical man, not prone to rush things.
***
REES JONES AND I WERE at the village-owned course in Bellport, on the Great South Bay, 30 miles east of Bethpage and on the Great South Bay. People say Bellport is a Seth Raynor course but nobody really knows. I’ve been playing the course for 50 years and in my opinion Rees designed its two best holes, the longish, brackish par-3 14th, with a boomerang green and a wide creek running up its right side, and the par-4 15th, a classic Cape hole where you try to hit your drive into Bellport Bay (you can’t) before making a hard righthand turn to an elevated bayfront green.
Jones built these two holes in the late 1960s. On Thursday, he returned to Bellport for the first time since then. Through the afternoon, we talked a lot about the Ryder Cup and Bethpage Black, and Bellport’s village-owned course and Seth Raynor.
“Bethpage Black has really never had its star moment,” Jones said. “At the ‘02 U.S. Open, Tiger pretty much ran away with it.” Phil Mickelson finished second, three shots back. “The 2009 Open finished on a Monday. The PGA that Brooks Koepka won never really had that Sunday excitement.” That was in 2019. “This could be the one.”
Rees Jones, left, and the author at Bellport on Thursday.
Jones believes Bethpage Black, for Ryder Cup play, will not be anything like the beast it is for public-golf golfers. “The fairways are wide, the rough isn’t high, and the Americans are long, longer than the Europeans. I think that will make the difference,” Jones said. Shorter shots into difficult pins — it’s an ago-old recipe for golfing success. “The guts of the course — 9, 10, 11, 12 — favors the long driver.” Match-play is a momentum game. If you can carry a lead through the turn all you really have to do is keep on keeping on.
Some matches, Jones predicted, will turn on one of the most fascinating and difficult holes in championship golf, the longish par-4 15th hole with a severe green that slopes from back to front. You have to drive it long and in play, and you have to be able to lag putt. “Guys will win that hole with pars,” Jones said. In Ryder Cup golf, three days of match play, every hole is a fresh start. But when you win a hole with a par, it can be really demoralizing for the other side. You can watch play on 15 to gauge moods — and to predict outcomes.
Of the 24 elite professional golfers gathered at Bethpage Black, Jones believes that Rory McIlroy is the player most equipped to handle the variety of its challenges, including driving it long and in play and hitting lag putts to low-stress tap-in distance. In other words, the qualities that lets you win at Augusta are the qualities that a player will need to win matches at Bethpage Black. Perhaps it’s worth noting that there is only one two-time Masters champion among the 24 players Ryder Cup players, Scottie Scheffler of (per his open ceremonies introduction) New Jersey.
Rees loves Rory’s game, and America’s chances.
***
REES HAS BEEN A FRIEND for a long time. We’ve logged a lot of rounds on a lot of courses. When he was 64, he looked 74. When he was 74, he looked 74. Now he’s 84. He still looks 74. In terms of engagement, he’s at the height of his powers. He works more than many people half his age. He dotes on his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his friends, his caddies, his playing partners.
He loves public golf. He loves Bethpage Black, Torrey Pines, Wellman Golf Club, the city-owned course of Jacksonville, S.C. He did extensive work on all three of those courses. His father famously renovated Oakland Hills and Oak Hill, both Ryder Cup courses Rees knows well. Rees did extensive work to three Ryder Cup courses: the Country Club, outside Boston; Hazeltine National, outside Minneapolis; and Medinah No. 3, outside Chicago. He belongs to some of the most revered clubs in the world. But there he was, on a windy and muggy Thursday afternoon, at Bellport, at short, flat village-owned course that, for several hundred people on this golf-loving planet, I among them, is at the center of the golfing universe.
Bellport is not trying to be Augusta National (where Rees’s architect father, Robert Trent Jones, does not, in my opinion, get enough credit for making the back nine, with its many water hazards, the exquisite torture chamber it is). Bellport is not trying to be the Westhampton Country Club, a Seth Raynor course 20 miles east of here. It’s not trying to be Bethpage Black.
Bellport is a course where you can learn the game, two-putt from anywhere, breathe air, play through the wind, make some pars, find your ball and break 100 without breaking your bank. As a teenager, in the 1970s, I had a junior membership for $50 a year. I could make that in an afternoon clamming in the Great South Bay and mowing lawns.
“Golf needs more of this,” Rees said as he stood in the 15th tee. His return to Bellport wasn’t emotionally wrenching for him, not at all. It just made him happy, to see the holes hold up so well, and to see golf in all its lovely simplicity. The course was quiet in this dank afternoon. There were some kids playing afterschool golf. They weren’t future pros. Just kids having a good time. Rees was once a kid like that, playing a dollar-a-side match, something like that.
Rees will be at the Ryder Cup all three days. He’s predicting an American win. He’d even bet up to $100 on it, but not a penny more.
; "Why this Bethpage Black whisperer is bullish on U.S.’s Ryder Cup chances 1")
