Bethpage Blue

The Blue was the first course to open at Bethpage, in 1935—Tillinghast’s, ahead of even the Black. It’s less pure than it began: when Alfred Tull carved the Yellow Course out of the property in the 1950s, he took land from the Blue and rerouted it, so today it plays as a Tillinghast–Tull hybrid, strongest where the original holes survive.

The front nine is the reason to come. It tumbles across the same rolling park as the Black, greens perched as much as fifty feet above the valley floors, and locals rate it among the hardest nine-hole stretches on the whole property—the 462-yard 6th, the course’s number-one handicap, is a brute uphill from tee to green. The flatter back nine eases off. At $38 to walk it’s one of the best-value rounds in the country, and the tee sheet is nothing like the Black’s.