2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black begins one year from Thursday

Thursday marks exactly one year from the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, and preparations are in full swing.

The prestigious golf event, which is held every two years between teams from Europe and the United States in a match-play competition, will be held on the world-renowned course in Farmingdale for the first time next Sept. 26-28.

The park will open next March for play and be closed to the public in mid- to late August, about five or six weeks before the tournament. While play begins on Sept. 26, spectators can attend practice rounds beginning on Tuesday, Sept. 23. Fans have to register for the opportunity to buy tickets at rydercup.com, and if selected, tickets will go on sale in November.

The Ryder Cup is estimated to attract nearly 50,000 people per day and over 250,000 people during the week — the park’s biggest golf event yet — according to park director Scott Matson.

 “It will start to look different next winter when gravel goes down on the other courses. The build-out for hospitality and concessions and grandstands will begin in May of 2025," Matson said. “We will stay open during that time. Some of our courses will be rerouted or shortened, temporary tees, temporary greens, maybe go to a nine-hole [course]. The difference between here and everywhere else is we are a public course, so you'll be able to play it leading up to it and after the event where most venues we can't do that unless you're a member.”

Andrew Wilson, the park’s director of agronomy, said the Black Course’s 7,459 yards of rolling terrain and unique design contribute to the challenge of maintaining the course year-round.

The Black is one of five 18-hole courses at Bethpage State Park, making it the largest public golf facility in the country. Maintaining the fairways, greens and bunkers  of those courses  that host around 300,000 rounds per season is no easy task.

“The Black Course is famous for its bunkers," Wilson said. "We have almost seven-and-a-half acres of sand traps and some of them are quite steep. We make daily, incremental adjustments to the course like replacing divots, tee markers, cups, sand and drainage improvements in certain areas. It's almost if we're taking it as, say, a test score. We're at like a 96 and we want to get to 100.”

Wilson became a member of the maintenance staff of the park’s courses when Bethpage became the first public course to host a major championship — the 2002 U.S. Open — then the 2009 U.S. Open and the 2019 PGA Championship.

“There are 25 members of our 60-person maintenance crew that work specifically on Black because it requires so much attention,” Wilson said. “We have a pretty talented staff and all the irrigation on the Black course fairways and most of the rough has been renovated. We've been widening some fairways and we're still going to be doing that to two more holes this fall. We’ll then have those five to six weeks before the tournament to trim the [fairway] grass down to about a tenth of an inch and get it to perfection.”

Wilson says the picturesque par 5  fourth hole with its massive cross-bunker  often stands out to the casual golfer snapping a photo.  

  The Ryder Cup’s match-play format means a match  could finish before it  reaches the 18th hole, sometimes well short of it. 

"We have to make sure every hole looks just as important,” Wilson said. “For the PGA Championship, we know they're going to play to the 18th hole. But for the Ryder Cup being match play, they could end on 13, 14, 15, so we pay attention to nearly every blade of grass on this course and we take that seriously. We'll be ready.”

By Carissa Kellman

carissa.kellman@newsday.com@CarissaKellman