Trying to compare the U.S. Open golf tournament with a regular sporting event would be like comparing a space shuttle launch with a flight to Cleveland. The Open has its own unique heft, stature and noise. It shakes the ground wherever it is held, which, this year, is Long Island.
The Black Course at Bethpage State Park will host the most sprawling of golf's major championships the week of June 15-21. Crowds of about 50,000 a day will be on the grounds of the five-course complex to watch 144 golfers shoot for what many consider the most prestigious title in their sport.
It will be the third time in the past seven years the Open has come to the Island, having been at Bethpage in 2002 and Shinnecock Hills in Southampton in 2004.
The United States Golf Association usually does not return to one site so soon, but it was so pleased with the boisterous 2002 "People's Open," the first at a municipal course, that it almost immediately announced plans to come back in 2009.
Here is a quick preview . . .
What's there
Practice rounds will be Monday through Wednesday, June 15-17, with the championship going from Thursday through Sunday.
Getting there
The USGA and local officials plan to use the 2002 template, which means the public will park at Jones Beach and be shuttled to and from Bethpage. Also, extra trains will be added to the Farmingdale Long Island Rail Road station, which also will have shuttles.
Getting in
Most of the tickets were sold last year. A few more were put up for sale in February. Ticket brokers might have some available at the last minute.
What not to bring
Cell phones, pagers or any other electronic devices. Cameras are allowed during the practice rounds, but a BlackBerry or similar device that takes pictures does not qualify as a camera.
On TV
ESPN and NBC will split coverage, with the latter showing the key hours on Saturday and Sunday. (Check TV listings for precise times.)
Player to watch
Who else? Tiger Woods rates as defending champion two ways. He is the reigning Open champ, having beaten Rocco Mediate in an 18-hole playoff at San Diego's Torrey Pines last June despite having a fractured bone in his leg. He also is the defending champion of Bethpage, having raised the trophy at dusk in 2002, after a thunderstorm interrupted the final round. He was the only player to have broken par that week on the Black Course.
Others to watch
Long Islanders adopted Phil Mickelson at Bethpage during the '02 Open, establishing what one golf publication called "the Cult of Phil." Spectators sang "Happy Birthday" to the man who will turn 39 on Tuesday of Open week this time. ... Sergio Garcia had problems with hecklers at Bethpage last time, yet still was in second place entering the final round. He will be happy to learn that hospitality tents are farther away from the fairways this year. ... Anthony Kim didn't play the '02 Open at Bethpage. He was in high school, ready to celebrate his 17th birthday. But with two victories on the PGA Tour and a strong performance for the U.S. at the Ryder Cup late last season, he has emerged as a potential star.
The 15th is a long, narrow, uphill par 4 that begins the home stretch, after golfers go through the tunnel and return to the clubhouse side of Round Swamp Road. At 459 yards, it caused much angst in 2002 (one player called it "bizarre"). It is ranked as the No.-1 handicap hole -- meaning the hardest on the course -- for the thousands of daily-fee golfers who play the Black every year.
ABOUT BETHPAGE BLACK
With the economy devastated and the nation desperate, a massive public works campaign was begun to create jobs and generally lift the gloom. One such work relief project gave birth to the Black Course at Bethpage State Park, which has remained a golf jewel from the Great Depression through the 2009 recession.
In the beginning ...
Bethpage Black was part of an effort that employed 1,800 people. That was the plan endorsed by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, who saw to it in August 1933 that the Bethpage Park Authority was created and took title to the former Lenox Hills Country Club. Lenox Hills became the Green Course, one of five layouts at the massive park. It would be joined by the Yellow, Blue, Red and Black, with the latter being designed by famed course architect A.W. Tillinghast to be especially difficult.
Why it's special
"The Black Course was something special, almost as if the architect had been given the freedom to let his creative juices run wild one last time," wrote William Quirin, a math and computer science professor at Adelphi University, also a local golf historian, in his book, "America's Linksland."
It often has been compared to Pine Valley, the ultra-exclusive New Jersey club that often is cited as the greatest American golf course, steeped in mystery because it never hosts tournaments and always discourages visitors. But the Black has been the ultimate public facility since it opened on Memorial Day, 1936.
Not that it always has been the gem it is now. It looked unkempt for years in the 1960s, drawing golfers mostly because the other courses were too crowded. But a revival began in the early 1980s, when Long Island State Parks Commissioner John Sheridan launched a restoration.
The reputation grew so widely that the United States Golf Association decided to hold the 2002 U.S. Open there -- the first on a municipal course -- and pumped millions into sprucing it up.
The controversy
Iin 2002, Joseph Burbeck said that his father, the late course superintendent Joseph H. Burbeck, really did most of the design work that was attributed to Tillinghast. The latter was not around to oversee the Black's completion and gave Burbeck "considerable credit," Quirin wrote. Golf Digest was convinced enough to refer to Burbeck as the architect.
But Bethpage officials still hold to what current park director Dave Catalano said in 2002. "We have a bronze plaque on a rock," acknowledging Tillinghast, Catalano said, adding, "We have no plans to change it."
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