With all the rain delays at the Bethpage Black Golf Course on Long Island in the 109th annual United States Open Golf Championship, there is still a lot of competitive golf to be played. This is the second time Bethpage Black has hosted the U.S. Open, and just like the first time in 2002, the Bethpage Open is once again being called the “People”s Open.”
Historically, the Open has been played at traditional country club tracks such as Oakmont, Oakland Hills, the Olympic Club and Winged Foot, along with high-end resort courses such as Pinehurst and Pebble Beach. However, since 2002 there have been three Opens contested at municipal golf courses, two at Bethpage and last year at Torrey Pines, with another one pending at Seattle”s Chambers Bay in 2015.
Bethpage Black is also unique in U.S. Open annals in that it is a WPA-built course. For those requiring a brief history lesson, the Works Progress Administration was a Depression-era program with the twofold purpose of putting people to work as well as providing long-term infrastructure to America”s cities and towns. During the eight-year period of the WPA”s existence, the program built more than 1,600 public schools, some 3,000 public tennis courts, close to 100 airports, more than 1,000 post offices, some 5,000 public libraries, and 100 golf courses.
President Franklin Roosevelt wanted the working public to be able to benefit from the numerous WPA projects, hence the concept of tennis courts, a handful of swimming pools, a couple dozen museums, and a multitude of golf courses. Whether he knew it or not, Roosevelt”s WPA helped to expand the game of golf to the masses during a time when most golf establishments were private, elitist, and catered to the wealthy.
The WPA golf formula was to hire a well-known golf course architect to oversee the project. New golf course projects were few and far between and even big-name designers were glad to find work. In the case of the Bethpage WPA project, New York State Parks Department land on Long Island near Farmingdale was used to build four public-access golf courses (a fifth was added later). A.W. Tillinghast was hired to oversee a project that employed 3,000 men and women from 1936-1938. The other advantage to WPA projects such as golf courses was that upon completion, there were jobs that needed to be filled such as pro shop personnel, maintenance workers, greenskeepers, caddies and the like.
The WPA had an impact upon golf course development in Northern California during the 1930s. Haggin Oaks Golf Course in Sacramento was one such project, designed by famous architect Alister Mackenzie (who also did Augusta National, Cypress Point and Pasatiempo). Mackenzie also oversaw the WPA project in Sonoma County along the Russian River, which became the nine-hole Northwoods Golf Club. Willie Watson, the course designer of San Francisco”s Olympic Club, did a nine-hole WPA project in Ukiah. Nowadays, the original Watson work at Ukiah includes holes one through eight and the 18th hole (holes nine through 17 were added in 1970).
The WPA influenced the growth of the game throughout the country. In Boston, Donald Ross (Pinehurst, Broadmoor, Beverly) built the George Wright Golf Course in Boston. John Van Kleek (Tarpon Springs, Taconic) built the LaTourette Golf Course on Staten Island and the Split Rock Municipal Course in the Bronx. Jim Thompson built the WPA course in Schnectady, New York.
Among the places and locales that benefited from WPA golf were the Crescent City Golf Course in New Orleans; Monroe GC in North Carolina; Milham Golf Course in Kalamazoo, Michigan; Washoe Country Club in Reno; Phillips Park Golf Course in Aurora, Illinois; Bib Butternut Lake in Polk County, Wisconsin; Keller Golf Club in St. Paul, Minnesota; Pueblo City Golf Course in Colorado; Kenosha Country Club in Wisconsin; College Park Muni in Maryland; Naco Golf Course in Arizona, and the Forsyth Golf Course in Georgia. As one can tell by this short listing, the WPA golf course projects benefited all sections of the country.
The WPA also provided workers for projects that were private or university oriented. Alister Mackenzie and Perry Maxwell designed the Scarlet Course at Ohio State University in Columbus. Maxwell and his son Press then did private course jobs with WPA labor and built two top-notch establishments, namely Prairie Dunes in Hutchinson, Kansas, and Southern Hills in Tulsa, a past U.S. Open and PGA championship site as well as the venue for the 2009 U.S. Amateur.
The 2009 United States Open Golf Championship concludes this Sunday (weather permitting) at the Bethpage Black Golf Course on Long Island. A public course, it is once again being termed the “People”s Open.” In light of its formative beginnings as a WPA golf course project that employed some 3,000 workers during the height of the Depression, it truly is a course for the people, built by the people.
Finally, in a truly unprecedented move, the United States Golf Association announced earlier this week that the 2014 United States Open and the 2014 United States Women”s Open will be played at the same site in back-to-back weeks at the Number Two course at Pinehurst in North Carolina. It is unclear whether the USGA did this to approximate the way professional tennis holds its major championships, but it is certainly true that the blue coats will save a bundle of infrastructure money by using the same bleachers, corporate tents and merchandise centers at the same locale.
There is the possibility that Pinehurst will take quite a beating from the men before the women even get to tee it up, but Natalie Gulbis set the tone for women professionals when she stated that “the Open at Pinehurst elevates the status of our event, just like it did when we played at St. Andrews.”
