Bethpage State Park: Yellow Course

The Yellow is the shortest and easiest of the five Bethpage State Park courses, and that's a feature rather than a bug. Alfred Tull opened the Yellow in 1958, combining holes from the original A.W. Tillinghast Blue Course routing with his own new design work, so a round here actually walks across two eras of Golden Age American architecture. At 6,316 yards and par 71 from the tips (70.1 rating, 121 slope), it's the one Bethpage course that a mid-handicapper can actually navigate without feeling beaten up. Don't let the accessibility fool you. Tillinghast's famous 'Reef' par-3 12th is in the mix, and the Tull-designed holes on the back nine feature some of Bethpage's more creative fairway bunkering, largely absent on the opening nine, which keeps the Tillinghast corridors more open. The land movement is the same glacial moraine terrain that animates the Black, Red, and Blue; the Yellow just plays it with less venom. For a Long Island golf trip that wants to sample the Bethpage campus without all four days being punitive, the Yellow is the right second or third round, especially at a NYS Park muni rate.