Well we did it. :thumbsup
After years of talking about it we finally drove down on Sunday and played Bethpage Black yesterday.
It is by far the longest and toughest golf course I've ever played and we played it in the most punishing heat and humidity. It was 94* when we teed off at 8:30 and was 100* (or 38* c) when we finished 5.5 hrs later. For those who don't know the Black is walking only, we carried our clubs 7400 yards, up and down major elevation changes. We literally had to lay on the ground in the shade for several minutes after walking up the fairway to the 15th green.
Was it worth it? Absolutely :-) The course is majestic, the whole place is a golf mecca. I would do it again in a heart beat.
We had pre-booked a 3:50pm tee time on the Red course for Sunday and a 3:15pm tee time on the Black for yesterday. As it turns out neither of those times would have allowed us to play the full 18. These courses are long and slow with 6 hrs rounds being typical. The extreme heat was a mixed blessing as we were able to get earlier tee times both days due to cancellations.
We left Ottawa just after 5am on Sunday and arrived at Bethpage just after 12 noon, we were able to grab 1:40pm time on the Red (highly recommend course also). Yesterday, we showed up at the course at 7:30am and we had a choice of 8:12 or 8:30 on the Black for our foursome.
When I play again I will definitely hire a local caddie, it'll make your round more enjoyable and save you several strokes. They act as forecadies to help find balls and can give valuable advice about how to play the holes. We played without a yardage book and there are no pictures of the holes at the tee boxes so we had to wing-it with our tee shots and guess about landing areas and carry distances.
BTW, when we left Bethpage around 7:30pm on Sunday there was only 1 car in the line for Black course walk-up tee times on Monday. The course is normally closed on Mondays so that may have been part of the reason.
