Bethpage Black was born of the Depression. In 1936, New York State opened a sprawling public golf complex on old Long Island estate land at Farmingdale, and gave the crown of its five courses — the Black — to A.W. Tillinghast, the architect of Winged Foot and Baltusrol. He built it not as a private club's showpiece but as a brute of a public course: enormous, unwatered in the rough, and utterly without mercy.

The warning still stands at the first tee — a plain green sign that reads, "The Black Course Is An Extremely Difficult Course Which We Recommend Only For Highly Skilled Golfers." No other course in America introduces itself quite like that, and none has to. The tee shots are long, the bunkers are deep and steep-faced, and the greens sit up on the horizon like fortresses.

In 2002 the USGA did something it had never done — it brought the U.S. Open to a true public muni. In a cold, driving rain, Tiger Woods was the only man in the field to finish the week under par. The championship came back in 2009, where Lucas Glover outlasted a rain-soaked marathon, and in 2019 the PGA Championship arrived and Brooks Koepka led from wire to wire.

In 2025 it hosts the Ryder Cup — the first ever played on a public course. And yet the Black is still exactly what it was built to be: open to anyone with a state-park green fee, a tee time, and the nerve to read that sign and step up to the first anyway.

Museum-quality Bethpage Black map art, traced from real course data — every bunker, green, and fairway of A.W. Tillinghast's 1936 public masterpiece. Home of the 2002 & 2009 U.S. Opens, the 2019 PGA Championship, and the 2025 Ryder Cup. Four designs, six sizes, or personalized with your own round photo.

Course data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)