Phil Young traces his love for the golf courses at Bethpage State Park to his early rounds as a teenager in the late 1960s, first on the Blue Course, then the famed Black. Like plenty that came before him and many more after, he was first staggered by the Black while looking through the trees beside #3 green out toward the distant glacier bunker on #4. (It was this same view that motivated the USGA's David Fay to fight for the Black Course to host a U.S. Open.) From that moment, Young was not only an intense Bethpage Black enthusiast but also a devoted follower of course designer A.W. Tillinghast.
So when Golf Digest during the lead-up to the 2002 U.S. Open published a feature by senior writer Ron Whitten that reassigned Tillinghast's Bethpage Black design credit to unknown park superintendent Joseph Burbeck, it inspired instant debate and research in the growing golf course architecture field and upended what many Tillinghast disciples, including Young, believed to be true.
In his latest book, "Bethpage State Park and the Three Geniuses Who Created It," Young elevates Burbeck to lofty heights beside Tillinghast and Robert Moses as one of the indispensable founders of the enormous park, golf complex and Depression-era public works project. Burbeck was responsible for the creation of the park, Young says, a "massive" task for someone who had to satisfy the powerful Moses and a panel of influential government officials.
"The fact that he could bring that building project to completion in two years, that alone puts him at the top of the top," Young says.
The hardcover book -- Young's third release devoted to Bethpage and one of many chronicling Tillinghast's life and design career -- includes a chapter outlining Burbeck's many responsibilities in transforming the 1,300-acre Benjamin Yoakum estate in Farmingdale into a vast New York State-owned recreation hub. Aside from answering to Moses and the Long Island State Parks Commission, Burbeck was tasked with, among other things, processing hundreds of federal relief workers, overseeing sports, course building and a caddy program, and supervising clubhouse construction and all park infrastructure.
"Burbeck had to run two offices," Young says. "One to maintain the records for federal and state government, and another to run all operations for the park."
What the Tillinghast biographer and historian for the Tillinghast Association does not list among Burbeck's many accomplishments, still, are the designs of the Black, Blue and Red golf courses. Design credits for those remain with Tillinghast.
Young makes his case over 80 pages that balance excerpts from newspapers and golf magazines with some personal anecdotes, all weaved between full-page photos and sketches. Chapters chronicle the conception of the park (for which Moses earns his title of "genius"), descriptions of the courses and the "grand" golf exhibitions hosted in the 1930s and '40s. The headliners, though, are the chapters devoted to Tillinghast's and Burbeck's intertwined roles during development of the golf courses and completion of the park as a whole.
Among the new evidence Young introduces here is a state employment card that lists the exact dates Tillinghast was on Bethpage grounds offering his services as "consulting architect." The government document refutes previous claims, including in Whitten's piece, that Tillinghast signed onto the job for a maximum of 15 days. In fact, he was paid for nearly double that time, and in Young's estimation, the dates line up with the routing, shaping and grow-in of golf courses built at a rapid pace by hundreds of relief workers.
Young also recounts a story first told in his 2004 book, "Golf's Finest Hour: The Open at Bethpage Black." Just weeks ahead of the 2002 Open, professional golfer and NBC commentator Roger Maltbie stood on the Black's fifth green and made his own contribution to the debate. "I can tell you one thing for certain," Maltbie declared. "No one named Burbeck ever designed that hole."
Who did he say that to? Phil Young, eyewitness to a foursome of Maltbie and three Bethpage regulars playing a taped round for part of the Open broadcast.
ORIGIN OF THE TILLY-BURBECK DEBATE
For nearly 70 years, three of the four "original" Bethpage courses were tied to Tillinghast without dispute. The new park absorbed the existing Lenox Hills Golf Club, later the Green Course, in 1932, then added his Red, Blue and Black in 1935 and 1936. A month shy of the highly anticipated, publicly hosted 2002 Open at Bethpage Black, Whitten turned that widely acknowledged history on its head with a finality that struck Young and other Tillinghast supporters. "[Burbeck] did design Bethpage Black," Written wrote. "The evidence always has been out there, if anyone had bothered to dig for it."
Whitten's revelation in Golf Digest hinged on the account of Joseph Burbeck Jr., who as a 4-year-old took part in the August 1935 clubhouse grand opening, his presence captured in photographs of a young boy unlocking the new structure with a ceremonial key. The younger Burbeck told Whitten he recalled long days watching his father pore over blueprints and drafts in the family's home on the park grounds and visiting construction crews hard at work on the new courses. His father's contributions had been overshadowed by a prominent figure who was barely on site, and so the name "Tillinghast" was not spoken in the Burbeck house, per mother's orders.
These memories formed the foundation of Whitten's argument, backed up by two supposedly smoking guns -- that the courses had already been laid out when Tillinghast was brought on as a 15-day consultant in December 1933, and that a 1959 "official history" published by the parks department says Bethpage's golf courses were "designed and constructed under the direction of Joseph H. Burbeck."
Of the two, the claim that design work had already been done prior to Tillinghast's arrival is the most significant, and would likely settle the debate once and for all. But that claim is not adequately supported say Whitten's critics. There is evidence that some pre-Tillinghast work might have been done on the Blue Course, but nobody knows precisely to what degree, and by whom.
Neither Tillinghast nor Burbeck were ever quoted with specific descriptions of what they performed or were hired to do on the golf courses. Only Tillinghast comes close. In 1937 he wrote, "It was my very good fortune to be selected by the Commission as its consultant course architect," then lauds Burbeck for his valuable support. Similar statements appear elsewhere, all of which open the door to other questions that researchers have sought to answer. What does "consultant" mean in the context of government-hired workers amid a global depression? What does the design term "laid out" mean when relayed by a 1930s news writer? Whose word carries more weight -- Tillinghast's, or a reporter speaking for Burbeck, as golf writer Lester Rice did in a 1937 feature?
And that's where the Tillinghast-Burbeck issue bogs down on a rough-covered slope shaped by hearsay, semantics and deconstructions of news reports and public-relations speak. Quotes culled from articles, golf magazine features and promotional pieces, plus sketches, models and anything bearing Tilly penmanship, have formed for nearly two decades the collective Zapruder film of the golf course architecture field. Both sides rely on historical evidence that by nature is open to interpretation.
Will the debate be settled by the time Bethpage hosts the Ryder Cup in 2025? "No," Young says. There likely is no document hidden away somewhere that will provide closure. (One set of design drawings supposedly exists in a government archive, though searches have turned up nothing.) Even if drawings were found somewhere, chances are they wouldn't have Tillinghast's signature on them anyway, Young says, because that's not always how he worked.
"This is all there is," according to Young.
BURBECK'S LEGACY
Over time Young's understanding of Burbeck's expansive role at Bethpage has led him to appreciate the longtime superintendent on a whole new level. "The purpose of this book is to really show what Burbeck did," he says.
When Whitten's piece came out in 2002, Young quickly became the go-to source for a discussion and defense of Tillinghast. He appeared on CNN, The Golf Channel and was approached by newspapers around the country. After all, his book, "Golf for the People: Bethpage and the Black," had just been published earlier that spring.
Needless to say, the relationship between Young and Whitten has had a Koepka/DeChambeau vibe. The two communicated briefly in the wake of Whitten's feature, but neither moved from their position. Seven years later, Whitten reaffirmed his stance with a second Golf Digest piece in advance of the 2009 Open at Bethpage. In it he references a 1936 New York Times article sent to him by a "Tillinghast proponent" -- Young -- that seemed to support him as the designer. "Does that one item convince us that Tillinghast deserves primary credit for Bethpage Black?" Written wrote. "Nope." [Whitten did not answer a request for comment from Golf On Long Island.]
What Golf Digest did to Burbeck was a "major injustice," Young writes in his book. "They ruined Burbeck's legacy. He was never the 'villain' in this story until 2002."
Young's passion for both Tillinghast and Burbeck is evident in Three Geniuses. So eager is the author, at times, to present his wealth of information that misidentified years or hole numbers occasionally sneak into the text. But it doesn't detract from the research.
Though the case will still be open when the Ryder Cup tees off in 2025, perhaps something else will be done by then, something that Bethpage has already done for Tillinghast and Rees Jones.
"I hope the park comes up with a way to honor Burbeck," Young says. Judging by his respect for Burbeck, it's likely Tillinghast would agree.
"Bethpage State Park and the Three Geniuses Who Created It" can be purchased online at the Golden Age Research website.
[PICTURED -- TOP: Joseph Burbeck; SECOND: A 1935 aerial of the Red, Blue and Black courses. A polo match is in progress on what is currently Black's first hole.; THIRD: A.W. Tillinghast; FOURTH: Plaques dedicated to Tillinghast and Rees Jones near the Black's first tee.]
