Breaking down the Ryder Cup village: How Bethpage Black returns to a public golf course

Cleanup of the nearly 1.7 million square feet that anchored the 2025 Ryder Cup was in full swing this week after some 250,000 fans traversed Bethpage State Park for a three-day event that required the golf facility to undergo a major transformation.

Bethpage Black hosted the Ryder Cup from Sept. 26 through 28, with Team Europe hailing as victorious. But the contest, held every two years on a different course, required an entire village to be built inside the facility for everything from bleachers to merchandise and food concessions to the hundreds of portable bathrooms for fans following the players for miles around the course.

And since Bethpage is a public course, the pressure is on to return the Black and the other courses in the park, the less challenging Red, Blue, Green and Yellow, to relatively pristine condition for public play in October.

Bethpage Black should be reopened to the public by Oct. 10 for walk-ups only between 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and will resume reservations and walk-ups Oct. 24.

The Red and Blue courses will open this Saturday, and there will be three reservations available for playing the course and three walk-ups allowed per hour from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., with possible temporary greens and tees, said George Gorman, regional director of state parks on Long Island. 

The Picnic Parking Field and Picnic Area will open on Oct. 9. The reopening of the Green and Yellow courses is still to be determined. 

"It's great that after the Ryder Cup, a major international golf event, that we're able to get the courses open and the park available to the public so quickly," Gorman said. 

Setup for the tournament began on May 19. So after three years of planning, it is bewildering to see the structures come down so quickly, Ryder Cup operations manager Evan Crowder said.

"It happens in one week, and then you're expected to tear it up quite twice as quick," he said.

Crews began taking down the enormous signage "immediately after the final putt" on Sunday, the last day of the tournament and first day of clearing the park’s 300 structures, Crowder said.

"It comes out the opposite way it came in," he said.

Cleanup crews were working fast during the day to take down furniture and interior structures before taking down external structures, along with crews from about 40 vendors.

Fans left an average amount of trash and items by Sunday, but nothing too damaging, Crowder said. An ecology team oversees walking the course and disposing of garbage as needed.

Winters Bros. a Long Island-based waste and recycling company, is partnering with the Ryder Cup and assisting with about 90 dumpsters used to dispose of waste, Crowder said.

Select sanitation stops near the immediate vicinity of the park were changed to earlier morning hours last week due to the Ryder Cup. All town sanitation stops are now running on normal schedules, spokesperson Marta Kane said.

Golf fans will get another chance to see the Black prepared for other world-class tournaments such as the KPMG Women's PGA in 2028 and the PGA Championship in 2033.