Three of a kind

When you visit as many golf courses and talk to as many superintendents as our staff does in the course of a year, you're bound to pick up some interesting information. It happened late last week during my visit with Craig Currier and his team at Bethpage State Park on Long Island, which this June will host the 2009 U.S. Open.

A lot of times, though, there just isn't a place in the stories we write for GCM for that information. It's good stuff, but in the long run it doesn't have much to do with anything in particular.

That why I'm welcoming you to "The GCM Three," a feature I just created for the blog while waiting for my flight home to leave Chicago. When the staff of GCM is on the road — or maybe just when I'm on the road; the rest of the team may tell me to take a hike on this one — we'll offer up three unique, fascinating, eye-opening but ultimately useless tidbits of information that we gather during our time visiting you, the dedicated golf course superintendent. They might be about the business, the golf course, agronomy. They might be personal. They might be great stories that otherwise would never see the light of day in this industry.

In short, The GCM Three will be anything we say it is. So without further ado, The GCM Three from my visit to Bethpage. I hope Craig doesn't mind playing guinea pig on this one (if he does, I'm sure I'll hear about it!);

ONE: Currier has a couple of notables in his circle of friends — one an NFL referee who shall remain nameless and the other is Garth Snow, the former NHL goalie who is now the general manager of the New York Islanders. The Isles came up when I mentioned that my hometown's new downtown arena, Kansas City's Sprint Center, is currently playing the role of pawn in a bid by the Islanders ownership to extract a new arena from New York and Nassau County. It's a pretty public threat*, but as much as I'd like to see an NHL or NBA team in the arena in my own backyard, I hate it when "name" professional sports teams relocate. Can you see the Green Bay Packers moving to San Antonio? No, you can't, and I can't see the New York Islanders moving to Kansas City ... at least without a name change. The KC Islanders would give the Utah Jazz a run for their money as the least-appropriate nickname in all of sports.

*Currier told me during a recent game between the New York Rangers and the Islanders, bitter rivals in the world of hockey, Ranger fans broke into taunting chants of "KAN-SAS CITY!!!" on more than one occassion.

TWO: Happily married with a 4-year-old little girl and a 6-month-old baby boy, Currier's marriage proposal is one for the record books. Currier popped the question following the final round of the 2002 Open, also played on Bethpage's Black Course. And I mean immediately after the final round. In the maintenance facility. In front of about 300 people. Fortunately, she said "yes."

THREE: At it's peak in the early 2000s, the five courses at Bethpage State Park annually pushed 375,000 rounds of golf around the layouts that wind their way through central Long Island. That amounts to a staggering 75,000 rounds per course (although the real rounds-per-course numbers obviously never broke down that neatly) in a part of the country where the golf season is anything but year-round. Nowadays, that number is closer to 300,000, but take into account the fact that both the Black (Nov. 1-April 1) and Red (Dec. 1-April 1) courses close for the season, something they didn't always do. The Blue, Yellow and Green courses remain open all year, weather-permitting.

Also staggering — the green fees at Bethpage. What an unbelievable bargain. Anyone can play the Green, the Blue and the Yellow for $31 on weekdays, $36 on weekends. New York residents can play the Red, considered just behind the Black in terms of difficulty and prestige, for $36/$41 while non-residents have to fork out a little more — $72 on weekdays, $82 on weekends. Even the Black — the two-time Open-hosting Black — remains doable for New York residents lucky enough to grab a tee time, with weekday rates of $50 and weekend rates of $60. Non-residents can almost forget about playing the Black, because only a handful of non-resident tee times even exist, but if they luck into a spot, they'll fork out $100/$120.

In this day and age, that's plenty of bang for your buck.

Comments

[improve golf swing]

this is such a beautiful course.