Bethpage Yellow

The Yellow is the odd one out at Bethpage: the only course not from Tillinghast’s 1930s, and the only one built to handle overflow. By the 1950s the park’s four courses couldn’t keep up with demand, so Alfred Tull—who had apprenticed under Emmet and Tillinghast both—split the original Blue in two and built the Yellow from what was left, opening it in 1958.

It’s the shortest and most forgiving of the five, a mix of Tull’s own holes and holdover Tillinghast ones over the same rolling park land. The front nine barely has a fairway bunker; the middle stretch, where the old Tillinghast holes survive, brings the biggest sand and the most bite before the course eases back home. It’s the one to bring a beginner, or to walk nine after work—genuine Bethpage golf, minus the intimidation, for $38.