Bethpage Black
If you are looking for a fun sports experience that dates back to the 1860s, attending the races of the Triple Crown of horse racing fits the bill.
Now combine a day at one of the nation’s oldest sports cathedrals with a few rounds of golf in the cities that host one of those three traditional horse races or in the surrounding areas, and you have yourself a really good time.
The Triple Crown has been around for longer than the oldest golf course in the United States. This year’s running of the Kentucky Derby (won by Mage at odds of 15-1) was the 149th rendition.
The Preakness Stakes in Baltimore will be contested for the 148th time and the Belmont States in New York City will be going to post the second Saturday in June for its 155th occasion, with the first Belmont run in 1867, about 15 years before the first nine-hole golf course opened in America.
There’s nothing quite like the pageantry of the Triple Crown and attending any of the three most important early-season races for 3-year-old horses is always quite a party.
We were up to the task and made sure we scheduled our trips to Louisville, to Baltimore and to New York City with a heaping helping of golf on the agenda running up to race-day Saturdays and on the getaway day of the four-day weekend.
Here’s some recommendations for such a trip to the three Triple Crown sites:
French Lick’s Pete Dye course
Louisville
Louisville, the home of the Kentucky Derby and the University of Louisville, is set on the banks of the Ohio River across from southeast Indiana. As far as golf goes, the city is most famous for Valhalla Golf Club, host of the PGA Championship in 1996, 2000 and 2014 (and in 2024) and the Ryder Cup in 2008.
Good luck in wrangling an invite to Valhalla, so set your sights on some of the dozen or so great public tracks in or near the city.
Heritage Hill Golf Club, set in Shepherdsville about half-hour south of Louisville at the base of Kentucky’s Knobs Region, was designed by former Jack Nicklaus associate Doug Beach and sports Bentgrass greens and Zoysia tees and fairways over its 7,100-plus yards.
The par-72 golf course has five tee boxes ensuring its playability for every level of golfer and has a routing that features a mix of open and wooded holes on a rolling terrain. Heritage Hill was named a Top 10 New Course in America in 2008 by Golf Digest and has spent the past 15 years establishing itself as one of Louisville’s premier public golf courses.
Just across the river about 45 miles southwest of Louisville, Chariot Run is an equestrian-themed golf course that’s an amenity of Caesars Southern Indiana Casino in Laconia, Indiana. It was built in 2002 and designed by Bill Bergin with more than 7,200 yards with Bentgrass fairways and greens, sparkling lakes, lush fairways and a smattering of trees to define the routing.
Chariot Run is considered one of the region’s top public championship courses and has been ranked in high as Indiana’s No. 4 Best Course You Can Play by Golfweek.
While you are on that side of the Ohio River, it behooves you to take the short trip north to the French Lick Resort and its 45 holes of golf designed by Tom Bendelow (1907), Donald Ross (1917) and Pete Dye (2009). The latter two courses are ranked among the top resort courses in America and are as challenging as any pair of courses anywhere while Bendelow’s Valley Links is a family-friendly nine-hole offering.
The resort is also home to two nationally historic hotels – the French Lick Springs Hotel and the sublime West Baden Hotel – rejuvenating spas, and a spacious, single-level casino which has been rated No. 4 Best Casino outside of Las Vegas by Yahoo Travel.
Chariot Run
Baltimore
The Charm City is located on Chesapeake Bay and is the site of the aging Pimlico Racecourse, the home of the Preakness Stakes, the middle jewel of the Triple Crown run two weeks after the Derby. With its Mid-Atlantic location, the Baltimore metropolitan area presents ideal weather for golf in the late spring and summer with cooler weather than most Southern states.
The benchmark courses in this area are Baltimore Country Club (Five Farms) and Caves Valley Golf Club but, again, both of those are private and a tough get, so here’s three courses on which to focus.
Compass Pointe Golf Courses in Pasadena about 15 miles east of BWI/Thurgood Marshall Airport boasts 36 holes sprawled out over two fantastic 18-hole courses (the Northeast and the Southwest). The facility, which also offers fabulous amenities, was designed by Lindsay Erwin and opened in 2003.
The Northeast course is a long, challenging track, spanning more than 7,100 yards and highlighted by the 622-yard par-5 ninth. Southwest is more confining and demanding of accuracy and precision and plays at 6,979 yards, with tee boxes for all levels that allow for scoring opportunities. Compass Point remains one of Anne Arundel County’s premier golf courses, with large greens that are undulating, fast and true.
With some of the most breathtaking views you will find in the Baltimore area, Rocky Point in Essex to the east of Baltimore over the Back River is one of the most picturesque, yet challenging courses in the area. Designed by Russell Roberts and opened in 1971, the course is surrounded by preserved natural wetlands. It’s carded at just 6,650 yards but deception and difficulty is added to the course via its many elevation changes. It plays much longer than its posted yardage.
Rocky Point’s front nine sends golfers out to the point of the bay with fairways lined with trees. The back nine is more scenic and challenges the golfer with holes against the water. One of the best par-3s in the region is the course’s 11th hole, which is a soft wedge down a hill with a picturesque view of the Chesapeake.
The Woodlands, another Erwin design that he often calls his best work, is in Windsor Mill about 15 minutes west of the city. It’s a challenging test for all golfers, with undulating greens at the end of lengthy Bentgrass fairways lined with hardwood trees. The course opened in 1998 to critical acclaim with Washington Golf Monthly hailing it as “the best public course in the Baltimore suburbs.” Golf Digest rates The Woodlands with four stars.
The Woodlands is considered one of the more difficult courses in the area, playing at more than 7,000 yards from the back tees. It shares a clubhouse with Diamond Ridge Golf Course, another fantastic Baltimore County Golf course, which is an honorable mention for this list.
Rocky Point
New York City
The third jewel of the Triple Crown is contested in Elmont, just on the outskirts of Queens. While the area is a haven for uber-fine – and very private – golf clubs (re: Winged Foot, Shinnecock Hills, Sebonack GC, et al.), there are also some great public access tracks within an hour or so’s drive.
In the heart of the Bronx sits Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature Design. The course opened beneath the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge (on the site of a former New York City landfill) in 2014 and debuted at No. 2 for New York on Golfweek’s list of Best Courses You Can Play, trailing only Bethpage Black.
NYC’s only tournament-quality course takes advantage of dramatic and spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline, East River, and Whitestone & Throggs Neck Bridges. It was handcrafted at every angle and is a very well maintained course (as one would expect) that offers many challenges and rewards accuracy.
Pound Ridge Golf Club, set about 15 minutes from Stamford, Connecticut and about an hour north of Manhattan, is an 18-hole daily-fee venue that is one of the toughest courses you will ever love.
The 172-acre course is Pete Dye’s only design in the Empire State and is carved out of land that’s highlighted by rock walls, outcroppings and house-size boulders. The fairways are interspersed with trees, streams, wetlands and water hazards as the layout snakes its way to the tops of ridges, through hardwood forest and open, rolling meadows.
The course is like a huge, intricate puzzle as the elements at Pound Ridge blend but are never transparent in the course’s plentiful package. There are the rocks and trees and blind shots over mounds to well-protected and often elevated greens complexes. Most of all the golfer has to be accurate at Pound Ridge. That task is mitigated somewhat by the course’s five sets of tees that are classified by handicap ability, allowing players of all skills to enjoy the strategic layout and wide variety of shot-making options.
Dye added extensive mounding, bunkers, a variety of grasses (including fescue just off the fairway on several holes) and water hazards, several of which require carries of better than 250-plus yards from the tips. There is water or wetlands on 17 of Pound Ridge’s holes.
No recommendation of public golf around New York City can be written without mentioning the five courses at Bethpage State Park on Long Island, especially the Black course. The Black might be the one public course in the New York area even casual golfers are familiar with because it hosted the U.S. Open in 2002 and 2009 and the PGA Championship in 2019.
The Black is famously one of the most penal tracks ever built and is not for the faint of heart or those golfers without absolute conviction and confidence in their game. It’s an A.W. Tillinghast design restored and revamped by Rees Jones and must be on the list of every serious golfer’s must-play experiences.
It’s all worth it. In the clubhouse you can get a mean egg sandwich or a full breakfast before the round, a steak afterwards and spend a half-hour after the round buying a shirt or a driver cover or a ball marker or a cap with the iconic Bethpage logo. This place is all about golf, and the pleasures and tests of the game.
Pound Ridge