To protect its discount lists, Bethpage takes action against bad actors and bots

Watch out, bots. The folks at Bethpage State Park are on to you. And other bad guys should watch out, too. The operators of the country’s most famous municipal golf courses are cracking down on abuse of their busy tee-time reservation system.

In an email sent to registered golfers last week, management at Bethpage, which oversees five 18-hole golf courses on Long Island, including the renowned Black Course, announced a series of policy changes designed to slow down those who try to exploit the system for their own financial or recreational gain.

The changes, some of which have already gone into effect, include cancellation restrictions and tee time limits, as well as the elimination of dubious accounts. Additionally, a new booking category has been created to ensure that only verified New York State residents receive 7-day advance reservation access to the park’s five golf courses: Black, Red, Green, Yellow and Blue.

In addition to outlining these policy changes, the email also warned against using bots or “third-party” booking services that advertise access to the Bethpage tee sheet. It also noted that any golfer “caught reselling, trading or otherwise circumventing the reservation system for a tee time” will have their account suspended indefinitely. “In some cases,” the email said, “State Park Police may also need to be involved.”

The stern message comes at a time when Bethpage is grappling with a large-scale version of a challenge many golf courses across the country are facing in the wake of the pandemic golf boom: Demand for tee times is outstripping supply.

While this imbalance is nothing new at Bethpage (particularly at the Black Course, which has hosted several major championships and where generations of golfers have slept in their cars hoping to snag one of the coveted spots), it has taken a new twist in the digital age. In an email to GOLF.com, Bethpage State Park director Scott Matson said strong demand for the facility has remained steady since the Covid spike. Not much has changed there. “The increase we have seen,” Matson wrote, “is in the form of complaints from our golfers who are often unable to make reservations because they are booked up so quickly by 7 p.m. each night” when new bookings become available online.

Why they disappear so quickly is another question. One reason appears to be that many golfers have gained an unfair advantage, whether by creating multiple accounts under different profiles, or by making reservations that they then cancel in coordination with friends, family members or playing partners, or by other tricks. In its email to registered golfers, Bethpage management said it had reviewed “every account” in its reservation system over the past few months and found hundreds of people with duplicate accounts. Those accounts have been deleted, the email said. To prevent such accounts from being created in the future, a new residency verification process has been implemented that requires users to submit an emailed copy of their New York driver’s license or an official New York State ID card.

A new cancellation policy allows golfers to cancel a reservation up to eight times in a calendar month. Any more will result in their account being suspended. This restriction will take effect on July 1 of this year. Further restrictions on tee times have been introduced. As of this week, reservations on the Red Course, which were once unlimited, are now limited to one booking every 14 days. The limit on the Black Course remains the same: one reservation every 28 days.

Swindling your way to the first tee on a log-clogged golf course is as old a tradition as bribing the starter, but that analog method has largely been replaced by high-tech identity-obfuscation tools. The impact is being felt far beyond New York. In Los Angeles, where city and county officials once dismissed concerns about bots and third-party intermediaries in the city’s golf system, public grumbling about the problems became loud enough this year to provoke a response; a $10 booking fee was recently introduced to discourage the resale of tee times.

It’s hard to say how prevalent bots are in the Bethpage system. In his email to GOLF.com, park director Matson said Bethpage’s reservation system has a Google security feature in place when it detects “anomalies or automation from the user device on the other side.”

“We know there are bots, and not just for golf tee times,” Matson said. “But we haven’t seen any conclusive, foolproof evidence that they work to secure tee times.”

As for third-party brokers, “some sites have popped up during the pandemic,” but they have been shut down with the help of the New York State Park Police, Matson said. “We haven’t seen any evidence of this recently, but we know the rumor is circulating in the golf community.”

One way to assess the nature and extent of the problem is to see how well the remedial measures work. In its email to Bethpage’s registered golfers, park management struck an optimistic tone.

“We know that some of these changes may initially cause some consternation among the golf public, but we are confident that these changes will allow more users to obtain reservations in the future.”

Josh Sens

Golf.com Publisher

Josh Sens, a golf, food and travel writer, has been a contributor to GOLF Magazine since 2004 and now writes on all GOLF platforms. His work has been published in The Best American Sportswriting and he is the co-author, with Sammy Hagar, of Are We Having Any Fun Yet: the Cooking and Partying Handbook.