He used to mow the picnic area at Bethpage State Park, but now Andrew Wilson will steer this famous venue through its biggest test yet – Hosting a Ryder Cup.
Wilson started as a jack-of-all-trades across the five-course complex before the turn of the millennium. Armed with an English degree, he was unsure of which path to take when in 1997, Bethpage was announced as a future US Open site.
“I was actually working at the clubhouse, so I’ve done almost everything,” Wilson said, speaking in the new edition of Your Course magazine, from the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association. “I was the starter, I was the ranger, I mowed the picnic area. We used to have clay tennis courts.
“I was the cashier for a year and that whole experience with selling greens fee tickets, with the golfers lining up the night before. I got an English degree, and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing it, but I did like working at the park.
“I was almost at the point where I was trying to figure out if I want to stay here or not. And then in 1997, the big announcement was the US Open coming in five years. The golf course Superintendent who was here was retiring, and we hired a new Superintendent, a guy by the name of Craig Currier.”
In Wilson’s journey to becoming Director of Agronomy at Bethpage in 2010, he learned much from Currier who took the team on Long Island to the next level.
“Craig had a degree, and he had worked at Augusta for a few years, worked at a couple of high-end clubs. He knew what the golf course should look like and knew how to get it there. It was pretty good as with a few of us, it was like a blank slate. That was really fortuitous to have him come here, because right now, all five golf courses have a superintendent as well.
“On the Black Course, Mike Hadley (previously) worked at Penn State. We have another guy, and we have the State University of New York. Two of our other Superintendents went to the SUNY schools. We have several Rutgers guys, but back in 1995, the Superintendents of each course were like retired police, retired sanitation, retired fire department.
| Andrew Wilson: Bethpage career |
| Raised on Martha Boulevard, three miles from Bethpage |
| Earned an English Degree from Fairfield University |
| Graduated from the Rutgers Professional Golf Turf Management Program in 2000 with High Honours |
| Part of the team that prepared the course for the US Open in 2002 and 2009 |
| Member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) and the Long Island Golf Course Superintendent Association (LIGCSA) |
| Became Director of Agronomy of Bethpage State Park in 2010 |
| Oversaw hosting The Barclays on the PGA Tour twice, then the PGA Championship in 2019 |
| Will oversee his first Ryder Cup at Bethpage, with tournament week spanning September 23-28 |
“It was guys coming here for a second career. When things went bad, with the weather not great for cool season grasses on Long Island, that’s when the conditions faltered, and that’s where Craig really took us into the modern age.”
Wilson took the reins upon Currier’s departure and led preparations for The Barclays in 2012 and 2016, and the 2019 PGA Championship. He believes the Ryder Cup’s scale is larger than the majors Bethpage has hosted in his tenure.
The fairway of the 10th hole on the Yellow Course was paved over, for example, as well as hospitality tents put on the Green Course, and the seed and sod orders are in place for the post-Ryder Cup period.
“It’s pretty noticeable. I don’t know if you can put a percentage on it, but I would say it’s got to be at least 20% bigger, because it is pretty noticeable.
“Some of the structures they’re building are going to be three storeys. That’s a new one, we’ve never had structures that tall before and we meet with PGA of America staff every week, and sometimes they’re showing us their site plan, and I say ‘Hey, what’s that over there?’ That’s another tent. They’re almost like, ‘Geez, he’s noticing everything!’
“Kerry Haigh has been fantastic to work with (Chief Championship Officer at the PGA of America). I like the phrase ‘stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods’. He knows what he’d like the course to look like, but he didn’t really ask us, ‘Are we using liquid fertilizer or granular fertilizer? What fungicides are we using?’
“We’ve both been here long enough (Black Course Superintendent Mike Hadley) that we know what we’re doing for the most part. But turf grass always has a tendency to humble you when you think you know everything!”
But despite this industrial build-out, there is a unique focus on nature conservation and protecting the wildlife habitats at Bethpage that won’t be paused for anything. There are many projects running that pre-date the Ryder Cup arriving in town.
Left of the 4th hole is a songbird garden with beehives, and this was one of a few spots on the Black Course where Wilson wanted to protect.
“We call it Vic’s Valley – our horticulturist’s name is Vic (Victor Azzaretto). They were looking at it (PGA of America) and I’m like, ‘No, No, No!’ They said, ‘OK, OK’,” Wilson explained.
“They backed off because that’s been a songbird wildlife garden now for 25 years. That area gets roped off during the tournament, and then there are a few other spots that we’re a little sensitive about. They seem to be pretty interested in what other things we’re doing.
| Bethpage’s conservation credentials |
| In June 2025, Wilson took part in a docuseries that spotlighted how Bethpage leads the way in nature conservation, alongside maintaining five golf courses.
The show documented how Wilson’s team balanced preserving urban wildlife sanctuaries and also explored water stewardship and the thriving butterfly population. “We do have a lot of this one plant called milkweed, so we do have a lot of monarch butterflies here now, they’re starting to hang around. We use this app called iNaturalist, and there’s all these entries for the whole park. It’s pretty cool. You can see what type of insects or butterflies we have here. |
“We’re bound to impact some of the day-to-day habits of the natural, 24-hour residents of the park. But trying to reduce that impact as much as possible is what we’re pretty mindful of. We have an ecologist here, and we have some bird houses that will have to be removed, and she’s keeping an eye on them.”
Wilson’s team will be bolstered by a large group of volunteers from the UK, Ireland, Finland, France and the Netherlands who also helped at the 2019 PGA Championship.
Together, they will hope the weather plays nicely in the lead-up to the event. 2019 brought dry conditions, but 2009’s rain-marred US Open caused long-term damage.
Wilson said parts of the Black Course “took two or three years to get right again.”
Beyond elite tournament prep, Bethpage deals with an extraordinary volume of daily play, with 250,000 rounds in 2024 across its five courses. The Black Course alone sees roughly 30,000 rounds.
The footfall is never-ending, but ‘The People’s Country Club’ is as equipped as any venue to cope with fanatic European and US fans pouring through the gates for the Ryder Cup.
“We’re a cool season grass facility, so we have Poa (Annua) greens. The Black Course has mainly Poa greens, Poa-ish fairways. We do seed ryegrass into the fairways a little bit. If there are areas where bentgrass is doing fine, we don’t really try to remove it or do anything with it.
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“We have groomers on a lot of our mowers so we can get the fairway surfaces fairly uniform and tight. And then the rough, we usually seed a mix of perennial ryegrass, Kentucky blue and tall fescue into the rough as well. It’s a way to hedge our bet, like if one grass is going to outperform another in the area, that helps us out a little bit.
“Last year, we did a quarter million rounds for the year. It’s a cool thing to say when you’re at a golf course that has a quarter million people a year.
“Typically, July and August are the toughest months for us. We’re not really too close to the water, but it does stay humid overnight here, so the recovery becomes an issue with Poa, where the night-time lows stay at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and the Poa doesn’t exactly love that weather.
“By the last week in September, it’s highs in the low 70s and overnight lows that dip into the 50s. That would be great if that happens and the sooner we can have that weather, the better.
“I think most turf managers would agree, sometimes you can try your best, but if Mother Nature has other plans, good luck.”
Andrew Wilson was speaking in Your Course, the twice-yearly publication from the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association. Your Course invites golfers to gain a deeper appreciation of what preparing and maintaining a golf course really involves. Head to www.bigga.org.uk to find out more.
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