The first thing you notice while playing Bethpage Black is the price. At $78 for in-staters, it may be the best bargain in golf.
The second thing you notice is the volume. Bethpage Black is only open for about 200 days per year, but during those 200 days, the golf never stops. Golfers tee off from morning until night, a ceaseless march that batters the sod and boggles the mind. Golfers at Bethpage Black are “like planes at an airport,” the maintenance workers like to joke, an analogy that makes more sense after a morning spent taxiing for takeoff on tee boxes and greens while golfers clog the jetway in front of you.
For many years, the only real mystery around the Black Course was how you managed to snag a tee time. Rumors circled the fairways about “family friends” who could get any tee time they wanted, while the transition to an online tee time system required only a rudimentary knowledge of coding to hack. For the first few years of the online system, tee times disappeared in milliseconds — a reflection either of Bethpage’s inherent demand or a system rife with bad actors, depending upon your worldview and knowledge of Python.
Now, though, that appears on the verge of changing. On Tuesday afternoon, the New York State Parks Service sent an email to golfers announcing the creation of stringent new procedures around tee time bookings aimed at stamping out “bots” and other bad actors. The new changes, which will go into effect on Thursday, Oct. 9, will enforce a new “2-step authentication/booking code” requirement — effectively ensuring that all golfers who book a tee time on the online system are real human beings.
The new system will require all those looking to play one of Bethpage’s five public courses to type in a code sent via email at the time of booking in order to secure their time. Each new booking will require a new booking code, which will be sent via email.
The changes mark the second time in 2025 that Bethpage has enhanced security around its tee time system. In April, the park announced stricter cancellation rules and the upfront payment of a booking “fee” (previously part of the greens fee paid at the time of playing) to discourage customers from booking many times at once. Those changes made a noticeable positive impact on tee time availability, even in the midst of a historically busy playing season (even by Bethpage standards) ahead of the Ryder Cup.
Still, some critics argued that the booking and cancellation changes enacted in April failed to go far enough to cut off bots and other nefarious actors. Under the new system, these critics argued, bots were disincentivized, but they were not actually removed, and would not be until the park enacted a “ReCaptcha” or 2-factor system ensuring all bookers were human beings.
Now, in October, Bethpage has reached for those exact changes, with the unstated goal of removing as many bots from the platform as possible, and returning the “People’s Country Club” to the people.
The timing couldn’t be much better. Bethpage is fresh off a historically busy playing season — even by its own bloated standards — with some wait times for overnight, parking-lot tee times on the Black Course stretching to two days, the longest in many a Bethpage lifer’s recollection.
Of course, an international spotlight was part of the allure of bringing the Ryder Cup to Bethpage. The tourism dollars the event has and will continue to bring to the state are prolific.
But, to paraphrase Spider-Man, with great volume comes great responsibility. Even at the Black Course. And maybe especially at the Black Course.
