Bethpage overhauls reservation system to fight tee-time bots

The sign directly in front of the Bethpage State Park clubhouse greets golfers with a bold proclamation.

“The People’s Country Club.”

It’s an enticing premise, and Bethpage has lived up to it for most of its 90 years, gifting the public golfers of Long Island’s country club utopia affordable, accessible, world-class golf. But in recent years, reality has been slightly murkier.

As No Laying Up’s Kevin Van Valkenburg first reported on an investigative podcast in January, Bethpage’s core values of accessibility and equity have been tested in the digital age, as the public course’s tee time reservation system appears to have been bombarded with illegal “bots” built to score tee times before the masses.

A Bethpage tee time is a coveted prize for obvious reasons. The Black Course, which will host the Ryder Cup in September, remains the crown jewel of public access tee times in the New York Metro area. At $80 in peak season, it is also the most affordable. The park’s remaining four courses are nowhere near as famous, but at roughly $50 per player, they represent a compelling value nonetheless.

The problem is that access to a tee time at New York’s most prestigious public golf course seems to have fallen into the hands of a smaller group of nefarious actors. When the park’s tee times go live on its online reservation at 6 p.m. each day for 7 days in advance, they are gobbled up instantaneously. When cancellations are re-released into the reservation system, they are snatched just as quickly.

The source of the problem appears to be the practice of “tee time farming,” where internet software programs, or “bots,” select tee times instantly, rendering regular golfers with regular computers obsolete.

Now, though, the state appears to be fighting back. On Saturday afternoon, Bethpage State Park sent a letter to all registered golfers informing them about a series of changes to the park’s reservation system aimed at cutting out tee time bots and restoring equity to the reservation process.

According to the letter, the state will start charging a nonrefundable $5 reservation fee at the time tee times are booked and reduce the number of cancellations allowed per month for eligible accounts.

The state’s actions represent the largest effort at fixing the tee time problem at Bethpage — changes aimed at stymying those who book tee times by the bundle using bots and then cancel or no-show them with regularity. In theory, the $5 reservation fee will also serve as a deterrent from bot accounts mass-booking tee times.

Some golfers have criticized the changes as not going far enough to fix the bot problem. The best way to ensure folks don’t cancel their tee times, critics have suggested, is to force those purchasing a tee time to pay the full sum of their bill at the time of reservation — or to make the fines and punishments steeper for those who cancel. By comparison, a $5 reservation fee is more of a speed bump than an outright wall of protection against illegal website usage.

“This changed… nothing?” wrote one account by the name of Nik Bando. “Phantom band-aid.”

Still, it seems clear that the bot issue is taking a larger emphasis at Bethpage as the park prepares for its Ryder Cup spotlight in September. For years, demand has far outpaced supply at the Black Course, and that is only expected to rise in the months preceding (and following) the Cup.

The path to online reservation salvation might still be a long way off, but after Saturday, it seems things at the People’s Country Club are trending … away from the bots.

(You can — and should — listen to KVV’s full No Laying Up podcast about the tee times issue below.)