Golf Digest released its 2025-26 list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses earlier this month, and Bethpage Black, home of the upcoming Ryder Cup, is comfortably inside the top 50.
One of nine Long Island courses and clubs to make the list, the Black Course settled in at #38, a few spots ahead of powerhouses like TPC Sawgrass, Baltusrol and Bandon Dunes. The Long Island representatives that finished higher than Bethpage Black — Shinnecock Hills, National Golf Links, Fishers Island and Friar’s Head — all landed in the top 15. The others are Sebonack (51), Maidstone (53), Garden City (58) and Piping Rock (98).
Pine Valley in New Jersey remains #1, which adds some panache to Bethpage, as seen in the Digest’s write-up of the Black Course:
“Sprawling Bethpage Black, designed in the mid-1930s to be “the public Pine Valley,” became the darling of the USGA in the early 2000s, when it brought the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Opens here. Then it became a darling of the PGA Tour as host of the 2011 and 2016 Barclays. Now the PGA of America has embraced The Black, which hosted the 2019 PGA Championship (winner: Brooks Koepka) and the upcoming 2025 Ryder Cup. Heady stuff for a layout that was once a scruffy state-park haunt where one needed to sleep in the parking lot in order to get a tee time. Now, you need fast fingers on the state park's website once tee times are available — as prime reservations at The Black are known for going in seconds.”
Also notable for Long Island is The Lido at Sand Valley, which made its debut on the list at #69. That land-locked Lido, of course, is a replica of C.B. Macdonald’s original Lido Club, the predecessor to the current Lido Golf Club along Reynolds Channel in Lido Beach.
The magazine considers the 2025-26 Greatest 100 to be its “most data-driven set of rankings to date,” relying on 88,000 evaluations by Golf Digest panelists who rate courses in six scoring categories.
To view the Bethpage Black write-up and see where other Long Island clubs ranked, check out the full Golf Digest top 100.
[List image courtesy of Golf Digest]
