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Saturday crowds at the U.S. Open at Bethpage State Park watch Tiger Woods and Angel Cabrera on the 17th hole. (AP/Morry Gash)
Between the weather and the crowds, the USGA may decide not to return the U.S. Open to Bethpage Black in the future and that would be a huge mistake.
The weather has been awful, rain suspended play early on Thursday, suspended play late on Saturday and delayed the start of play on Sunday. If the weather holds today and tomorrow, they should finish this tournament Monday. If not, we may be watching golf most of next week. But, this is on track to be one of the wettest June's in New York history. We already have received over twice the amount of rain this month than we usually do. Hopefully, the USGA will realize this is an anomaly and not use weather as an excuse to skip a future return to Bethpage.
The behavior of the crowd is another matter. There have been reports all week of fans acting badly and yesterday they taunted players as the rain came down. Golf is certainly a staid, some would say stuffy, spectator sport. What qualifies as “being a good fan” at Yankee Stadium is way over the top in most golf crowds. The crowds at Bethpage, one of the main reasons the Open came back after 2002 have been mostly great. Yes, some guys who probably had too much to drink got loud yesterday, but is that a reason to skip Bethpage in the future? No, it is a reason to sell people less beer in the future.
The beauty of the courses at Bethpage State Park is that it truly is “open”. Anyone who is willing to get to the courses early can play. You don’t have to plunk down some outrageous initiation fee to get in, you just need $50 or $60 if you live in New York, more if you don’t, and you can play the same tees as Tiger Woods. Most of us will never get to walk on the field at Yankee Stadium, or skate at The Garden, but we can play the same holes the best golfers in the world do. For a sport whose foundations are elitist, that is something worth celebrating and the USGA should bring the tournament back to Bethpage in the next decade.
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Is weather even seriously a concern? Will they just stay away from the entire mid-Atlantic?
Perhaps they should play only on courses contained in biodomes.
It isn't the weather so much as the crowd. The things fans were doing yesterday would have gotten them thrown out at the Masters. If Bethpage is unwilling to police those things, then the tour won't come back.
Pity that the ghettofab "guylanders" couldn't behave themselves, instead fitting snugly into cliched stereotypes like a guido into a wifebeater.
"Pity that the ghettofab "guylanders" couldn't behave themselves, instead fitting snugly into cliched stereotypes like a guido into a wifebeater."
Since I had to take the LIRR out to, as it happened, the same stop (Farmingdale) on the first day of play, I can report that there were plenty of people there who weren't from Long Island.
Two spectators were quoted in the linked article:
"We just had to rest a while to get some beer in us," said O'Shea, 22, of Manhattan.
"We just needed to relax," added McQue, 28, of Sunnyside.
Absolutely correct. I had to take the train out to Long Island several times last week and the trains were clogged (to the point the conductors made no attempt to collect fares) with apparently well-heeled Manhattanites, not Long Islanders, coming from Penn Station who were already loud and drunk and drinking on the trains.
Let's hope the USGA never returns.